Category: Halloween Hater

Dear Snarky – Is It a Bad Thing I Turn On My Sprinklers During Trick-or-Treat?

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c13c24927c3ab6b0bd965c3e1a893661Dear Snarky,

I’m getting some pretty serious attitude from my neighbors for not being “Halloween friendly” all because last year I turned all my sprinklers on during trick-or-treat. I don’t do Halloween and I thought by having my sprinklers going full blast people would get the hint to not come to my house. How is this a bad thing? One neighbor said it was hostile. Am I in the wrong here?

Signed, Not a Witch

Dear Witch,

Let’s look at this from a kid’s perspective. Sprinklers on equal not squandering my precious candy getting time on your house. So let’s call that not  a bad thing.

 As far as your neighbors are concerned I suggest you, in an effort to not be the witch of the cul-de-sac, abandon your sprinkler attack and just go old school – and by that I mean turn off your freaking lights and get over your bad self.  A dark house is the  traditional sign that nobody is home. Plus you won’t be wasting water. Now get off your broom and go eat a Kit Kat. Maybe that will improve your mood.

If you have a question for Dear Snarky – 21st Century Advice with an Attitude – please email me at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com or private message me on my Snarky in the Suburbs Facebook page.

 

Halloween What Happened?

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9979003Halloween is so misunderstood. How did an evening devoted to kids, costumes and candy turn into something so controversial schools are banning it? Now, that I’ve asked that question I think I know the answer. In fact, I can give you a timeline that will prove adults ruined Halloween.  Well, really it’s two intersecting timelines.

Give me a second I’m getting woozy here. I’m having a flashback to 9th grade geometry and it’s not pretty. Is it just me or did that last sentence just sound like the makings of a geometry word problem? The whole two lines intersect and form a linear pair blah, blah, blah. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Alright now I’m better, still a little light-headed, but I’m going to power through. So, let’s get back to the original topic – Halloween.

Let’s first examine timeline A that I will label Gruesome Grown Ups. This is where adults have taken Halloween and over the years have turned it from a focus on costumed kids collecting assorted Hershey’s miniatures into hoochie fest that today has swelled and festered into to a downright tramp-a-doodle-do. I’m not saying we all need to shop the Duggar costume collection of Biblical characters at Hobby Lobby, but come on if you’re a 45 year-old-mother it might be time to retire the French Maid Costume with white thigh highs. Same for you dads. Some things you can never unsee like your accountant in a “hottie Scottie mini kilt.”

To prove my point all I need to do is suggest you walk into any Halloween super store which is doing double duty as a wholesale club for Frederick’s of Hollywood and the lair for the criminally insane. It could just be me, but I don’t think the Star Wars and toddler Disney Princess costumes should be next to a life-size bloody female torso. And this is just a personal aside, but can we all just get over Zombies?

Timeline B is Halloween Whiners (also known as anti-Halloweeners). This is where some parents have imagined Halloween to be a sinister celebration. (Can you say over thinking trick-or-treat?) Using anecdotal evidence I will now flesh out a series of events that illustrate the disintegration of Halloween.

October 31, 2001 –  My son at that time was five  and his school embraced a full Halloween environment. Lesson plans included a study of spiders and Sam the Skeleton was used to teach about femurs and fibulas. By the time he was seven due to parental concern over a “ritualistic Satan based event” Halloween was replaced with a Fall Festival. This was basically Halloween without using the H word.

Two years later the Fall Festival gets kicked to the curb and it’s a Story Book Spectacular where kids are required to come as a character from their favorite book. Most parents didn’t so much as ignore the edict but sashay around it by explaining that Spiderman was in a book and just a little fun fact here there are more than 35 children’s books that feature candy corn as a character. How do I know this you may ask? Well, I had a kid that wanted to go as a candy corn for Halloween so I made sure it was book related.

By 2006 due to parents not “following the spirit of the guidelines” Halloween became “Great American Day” and kids were instructed to dress up as their favorite historical figure from the good old U.S. of A. This prompted a PTO throw down due to parents complaining that they now had to do two costumes for their child. One for school and one for Halloween. Also, there were problems with some families being confused over just which historical figures are American. Two kids came as Jesus. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these children were both from  the same family that always brought “Jesus is the reason for the season” cookies to the Winter party.)

By 2007 the school staff had given up. No matter what they did parents complained so October 31 became just another day of reading, writing and arithmetic. And who can blame them? It’s the educational equivalent of “so this is why we can’t have nice things.” Schools don’t have the time to waste negotiating the emotional and politically correct minefield that is Halloween.

Using my timeline as empirical data I believe we can blame the take down of Halloween on the  intersection of the Gruesome Grownups and the Halloween Whiners. Yes, indeed folks that’s all it took for a kid centered event to go poof and disappear like someone cast an evil spell of childhood disappointment.

cover_1-3-21* While you’re enjoying stuffing yourself with your children’s Halloween bounty add to your pleasure by purchasing the latest Snarky book for just 99 cents! All treat no tricks I promise. You can buy it for your Kindle or in paperback on Amazon.  It’s also available for the Nook or you can get it for your Kobo reader. Click on a link and give it a test read.  I hope you like it! 🙂

 

Dear Snarky – The Trick-or-Treat Throwdown

9 Comments

dear_snarky_logoDear Snarky,

My daughter just got bounced from a Halloween trick-or-treating group! 14 kids and six mothers were all going to go together to trick-or-treat. This has been planned since the first of October. All the girls are going as Disney princesses. My daughter is going to be Anna from the movie Frozen. Yesterday, I got a text message from a mom (who organized the trick-or-treating outing) telling me her daughter now wants to go as Anna and since it would be “weird” to have two of the same Disney princesses trick-or-treating together it would be “best if I found another group to go with.”

I’m so angry and upset for my daughter I wish I could do a throw down. How do I even begin to explain this to a six-year-old?

Signed, Can’t Let it Go,

Dear Can’t,

Don’t be angry and don’t, no matter how much you want to, engage in a throw down. Instead be happy, relieved and joyous. You, and your daughter, have been freed from spending Halloween with a bunch of evil, controlling witches. The fact that an adult would be such a freak about Halloween and what costumes kids are wearing, scares me, like a lot. And seriously, pretty much every little girl is going to be trick-or-treating as either Anna or Elsa from Frozen. The mom who sent you that text must have been off her meds.

The way I see it you can do one of two things – pick up the phone and find your daughter another kid or kids to trick-or-treat with or go just as a family and savor the experience. Also, on the plus side, I have found you can cover a lot more trick-or-treating ground when you are with a smaller group.

I would tell your daughter an abbreviated version of the truth, as in her Halloween has just been upgraded, and celebrate the news with a full size Kit Kat bar. As for that texting witch, I would get 48 rolls of toilet paper from Costco and decorate her house with it.

If you have a question for Dear Snarky – 21st Century Advice With An Attitude – email me at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com or private message me on my Snarky Facebook page.

I’m F’ing With Your Kid’s Halloween and I Couldn’t Be Happier

51 Comments

Sometimes people ask if they can “guesPicture 3t blog” on my site. This mother after reading Hold On Halloween I’m Coming to Save You requested an opportunity to comment on the other side of the Halloween story. Please note the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the “author” and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Snarky in the Suburbs. In fact Snarky thinks the author needs to relax and eat a Cinnabon.

As a gluten-free, organic, bio dynamic, carbon neutral, free trade, raw vegan with fruitarian leanings I already know you hate me and I couldn’t care less because I’m going to live longer than you, much longer. Why? Because I don’t eat the crap you do and that means I forgo using classic enabling techniques, such as I’m “celebrating a holiday or special occasion” to make excuses for shoveling a backhoe of cookie dough down my esophagus. Let’s get this point straight October 31 is not a holiday or special occasion unless you practice the dark arts and I’m pretty sure those rituals don’t involve a 12 pack of Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Halloween is one thing and one thing only – a sugar fueled festival of greed, gluttony and sloth. How any mother could be pro Halloween is beyond me. It’s like saying, “I hate my kids and I want them to die from early onset cardiovascular disease and complications from stage 2 Diabetes one snack size Snickers bar at a time.”

Wake up moms! By loving Halloween you are an instrument of death. I despise all of you starting with the “butter mothers” with their thighs rubbing together, their lips glossy from the left over marshmallow residue of a pumpkin Peep and their triple layers of ab fat fighting for a way out of the tummy control panel of their J Jill lycra enrich jeans like two brothers brawling over a X Box game controller. These moms can be seen on party day joyfully hoisting a tray over burdened with devil food Halloween cupcakes that not only have a gravy ladle of icing on each one but then give the middle finger to nutrition by dipping Nutter Butter cookies in white almond bark and placing one on top of each cupcake to resemble a ghost!

Good God, why don’t you just smother the kids by placing their heads in a vat of frosting until they experience death by asphyxiation. At least the butter mothers are honest. Their squishy rolls of jiggly back fat are a testament that they eat the death they merrily foist on our children. The worst are the Cross Fit maniacs, the marathoners and the yoga/pilate/fitness fusion hypocrites.

They bounce into the classroom on their $150 Adidas Energy Boost sneakers doing arm curls with a plastic platter of pumpkin shaped sugar cookies, vampire brownies, and Cocoa Kripsy squares all from the Crack House of bakeries – Walmart –  because their too busy romancing their body mass index to actually attempt to create anything from scratch. While one hand is holding the non recyclable, VOC off gassing, plastic offering of sugar, partially hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup solids, animal fat and sodium, the other one is clutching a half-gallon water bottle or adjusting their thong. Yet, what they cheerfully serve to children they would never swallow themselves because they don’t want to move up a size in their Spanx. They poison the most defenseless among us, our children, and abstain only due to vanity. For these mothers I harbor the heftiest scorn.

Because so many mothers are either too lazy or lacking in maternal love, that they willingly pollute our children’s bodies if not their very souls, I’ve had to step up and make the righteous, healthy choice for all of us by staging a Halloween Intervention. My campaign is focused on the elementary school. Yes, I proudly stand before you today as the reason no more sugary based “treats” are being served at school parties. I started slowly and first used my influence to phase in having a variety of healthy food choices at the class celebrations. Then I went full frontal foodie and got chocolate banned from the school.

After those victories I redoubled my efforts and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with sugar, wheat and dairy and before you could say trick-or-treat I had rendered any sustenance that didn’t make the Harvard School of Public Health’s Top Ten Super Foods list person non gratia. Say hello to a school party featuring yummy raspberries, blueberries, brussel sprouts, broccoli, garlic and kale.

Does this list horrify you? Does it make you uncomfortable? It should because while you advocate slowly killing your kid with a smorgasbord of refined sugar and white flour I champion the likes of kale! A cup of which provides 460 percent of your daily vitamin K, 74 percent of your vitamin A and 107 percent of your vitamin C.

Go ahead and call me a kill, or if you like a kale, joy and throw around your weak excuses that it’s only one day a year, that kids need a chance to be kids or the most laughable that if you don’t let your kids have sugar every now and then they’ll binge on it as soon as your back is turned. Yeah right, well if you use that logic then maybe we should let our children have some cocaine or heroin from time to time just to make sure they don’t one day go nose up and needle in.

My victory isn’t complete yet. I’m steadily working towards my goal of having zero food at any party and replacing the kids sitting on their asses doing lame arts and crafts (using non-sustainable crayons that I just know were not made with low impact dyes) with strenuous exercise. Why can’t Halloween or Valentine’s Day be celebrated with a jog-a-thon and a fitness obstacle course with coconut water for all? Why must every party be food related?

I know to some people I look weak and sickly like a white asparagus stalk that was boiled in water too long and yes my kids are extremely thin and so pale if you look at them in direct sunlight you can make out their central nervous system. I’ll admit they do miss a lot of school, but it’s not their fault. Their virgin immune system is constantly threatened and compromised by the onslaught of environmental filth being flung their way via the cesspool of the American lifestyle.

My profound and everlasting love for my three children is primarily why I’m staging the Halloween Intervention and just you wait next on my list is the Winter party in December. Guess what moms?  I’ve convinced the principal to make it a snowflake party with an ice crystal theme. You know what that means – no food – only frozen water! I call that me W-I-N-N-I-N-G!

**For more Snarky check out my book  Snarky in the Suburbs Back to School. 

Here’s a little ditty about it: The Spring Creek Elementary School PTA board (a coven of Mean Moms dressed in Uggs, yoga pants, and dermal filler) is up to no good.  Wynn Butler (middle-aged, uncool, and not bringing sexy back) is determined to find out what’s going on. With help from her two kids, a Roomba vacuum turned mobile surveillance drone, and a few good friends, Wynn launches a covert investigation that leads to the “mother of all revenge capers” at the school’s annual Fall Festival.  If you’ve ever fantasized about smoke bombing the idiot parent who has yet to master the fine art of the school drop-off lane, or standing up and shouting, “Liar, liar, Botox on fire” during a PTA meeting, then this delicious tale of payback is for you. 

To stay up-to-date on new posts and take part in my not so deep thoughts click on this Facebook link – http://is.gd/iEgnJ (That’s the abbreviated link to my FB page) or I twitter @snarkynsuburbs.