Posted by:
Trick-or-treater
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Date: October 11, 2019 01:36AM
I agree with the poster who thinks it's a dumb idea to teach children to take candy from unfamiliar adults in cars in dark parking lots at night! Could this be any stupider? Maybe, having kids approach a stranger's open trunk.
Actually, most child kidnappings and molestations are not from strangers, but from somebody the child already knows!
The bishop's son tried to molest my daughter, while she was asleep in her sleeping bag at a campout. I was always being grabbed or chased or robbed on the BYU campus. IMO, an inadequately lit Mormon parking lot is the last place I would want my children to be--traffic notwithstanding.
Our neighborhood ward has its trunk-or-treat on a different night than Halloween. It is not very well attended. It's in competition with fun Halloween parties, haunted houses, school Halloween parades and carnivals, and homework on a school night. My daughter took her little kids over there, when she first moved into the neighborhood, and people thought they were non-Mormon party crashers, and were very unfriendly. They never went again, or to the Christmas party, either. Her husband is the ward clerk, but has always refused to go to any of the Mormon parties or activities, except the sports, which all have been discontinued now.
Our neighborhood is about 50% non-Mormon. Each house is unique. My son is that guy that buys those big Home Depot decorations, and various monsters and creatures are all over his yard, and in the trees, and there's a graveyard. His house attracts a lot of kids. One house has a spook alley, that the parents take their kids through. One house cooks fresh donuts for the whole neighborhood--but word is getting around, and people come from everywhere for free donuts, and there's usually a huge traffic jam in front of their house. Another house has scary sounds blasting through the neighborhood. The kids like to see the neighbors, and they like to have their costumes appreciated. Some neighbors dress up, like I do. My grandchildren know which neighbors give out full-sized candy bars, cans of pop, and treat bags. The littlest kids come early, before dark, and the teen agers come after 9:00, carrying pillow cases, and with no costumes, and they are bigger than I am.
We lived in a great trick-or-treat neighborhood in California, with lots of houses and decorations and lights. There was a neighbor who served hot cider and treats at a table in their driveway; a retired couple who had both worked for Disney and wore authentic Disney costumes of the Tasmanian devil and the Disney buzzard, and they would jump out of the shadows, and the kids would scream; a kid that rigged up a ghost that would automatically fly up a wire to the top of his roof; and an old lady who made a scary monster out of her vacuum cleaner--I mean, these things were priceless! Carloads of Mexican kids would be let out on our street, and we always would give them double treats, because they went to the extra trouble. No wonder my son became the neighborhood "Halloween guy."