That Settles It.

I was never a kid.

A friend of mine, a mom with two kids so precocious they frighten me at times, put this up on Facebook just now:

...and the battle of 'you're wearing warmer clothes under your costume or you can't go out' begins...

Now, back when I was younger (he wheezed), Hallowe'en was actually a kids' holiday. The only adults you saw 'celebrating' Hallowe'en were the parents of younger children--ACTUALLY younger, too, say eight and below--escorting their younglings up the street and down the street, and not one of them willingly.  Back then, homemade candy was a thing, too. Oh, the razored apple urban myth was alive and well: we checked all the candy carefully, and I do recall by the last time I went out trick-or-treating in '83, my mom put an outright ban on anything that wasn't wrapped.  That probably had something to do with the Tylenol poisonings, which had happened the year previous; in exactly the same way we see Muslims with bombs hiding behind every bush today, everything that wasn't next-to-impossible to open (and more than a few things that were) was considered deadly back then.

Now, of course, the streets have emptied out in most places and adults spend more money on Hallowe'en than entire neighbourhoods of kids used to. (The sheet ghost was my standard costume most years; in '83 I went out as Carol Burnett, complete with high heels. Who knows why. I wouldn't have recognized Carol Burnett then and I wouldn't now. Must have been Mom's idea.)

Of course, in '83 I was 11. FAR too old to be trick-or-treating, as far as I was concerned. Hallowe'en was a holiday for children, and I hadn't considered myself to be a child since I outgrew Sesame Street. The chocolate bars tempted me, I'll admit. Usually, those would be gone within 24 hours and most of the candy would end up in the trash.

Like everyone else, I trick-or-treated through through all manner of weather. And I dressed for it. It simply wouldn't have occurred to me not to. I've been cold; I wasn't very old before I grasped that cold weather made me cold if I wasn't covered up properly; ergo I covered up properly. Actually fighting my parents on this? My parents, who would simply cancel Hallowe'en, and probably give me something to be scared about if I backtalked them to boot? Unthinkable.

I am in no way impugning my friend's parenting--she's one of the best mothers I've ever run across. I'm just saying either times have changed or I was strange...and I think you know what's more likely.

I've come to realize my overdeveloped sense of consequence robbed me of what little childhood I wasn't eager to lose immediately. I've written about the floor never having once been turned to lava in my house. My parents took me to a shrink when I got a little older because I couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality (they said); I, meanwhile, just didn't understand the point of fantasizing about undesirable things, such as your house going up in a fit of volcanic pique. For the same reason I despised depictions of even mild violence on TV or in movies--that HURTS, why would you even want to PRETEND to hurt somebody? It made no sense. It still doesn't.

I never got into comic books. My parents didn't read comic books....why would I? This was before it became un-PC to say 'comic book' (I believe the inoffensive term is "graphic novel". That lack alone has cost me dearly in lost cultural references. I sat through one Batman movie, I really don't care enough to remember which one it was, and I had no idea what the hell was going on. To this day I shun most superhero movies (which means (sigh) most movies because I find them just too stupid for words.

What can I say? I was in a hurry to grow up. Growing up seemed to be what kids were supposed to do, right from an early age, right? You got the 'big boy bed', then the 'big boy potty', then you sat in the car the same way the rest of your family did. I might be getting the order screwed up here...I distinctly remember sitting in the back seat of the car at four and the front seat at five. I also remember laying in the back deck behind the back seats, with my lips pressed against the cold glass of the back window. Unsafe? Only if you wrecked the car. The solution was simple: don't wreck the car.

Now, it's taken for granted that you're going to wreck your car, so there are airbags to cushion you when you do it and children aren't allowed in the front seat of the vehicle until they're old enough to fucking drive the vehicle...just like it's taken for granted that Mommy must drive her kids to school because the pedophiles are in every house, just waiting to pounce. I walked to school starting in grade four, and it would have been earlier if Highway 7 hadn't bisected my two-block route. And yes, I protested. I had been taught how to handle traffic lights; there was a traffic light AND  a crossing guard ("Mommy, why is there someone to help you cross the street? Don't people know how the lights work? Didn't their Mommies teach them?"). But there was a school bus, so I got on it and round for all of three minutes every morning and afternoon.

There were toys I was sad to give up, I will admit.  This one, especially:

Yeah, so I got a big kid's bike. So what. I'd kill for a much larger version of this thing today. The fun was unlimited.

And had I really understood what being an adult entailed, like most of us, I am sure,  I'd have elected to stay about twelve forever. Actually, that's not true. At 12, I was thick into the worst of the bullying that plagued most of my childhood and early adolescence. Part of the reason I was bullied? I acted too grown up, of course.