HALLOWEEN MAY BE SCARIER THAN USUAL
This Halloween, it’s not trick-ortreat. It’s pick-or-cheat. Or how about quicker feet?
Because one of the state’s recommendations to, you know, limit the contact between the givers and the receivers is simply to put out a platter of treats and let kids take one. Or all of them. Hey, I’m not saying 19 out of 20 trick-or-treaters wouldn’t play by the rules, but you know there’s gonna be that one kid for whom the temptation is just too strong.
And that isn’t the only recommendation. You should also put a bottle of hand sanitizer near the treats, and bring along a bottle (of sanitizer, people, sanitizer) if you’re taking your kids out.
Folks, it’s a given that Halloween is going to be different this year.
Anybody over the age of 50 remembers Halloweens when you heard stories about kids getting apples with razor blades. Urban legends, perhaps, but it just gave us more reasons to wish for candy instead of a stupid apple. Who gives
an apple out for Halloween anyway? What, did you run out of Brussels sprouts?
This year brings about a new reason to be wary of what your kids bring home, and it’s no urban legend: the coronavirus.
The only good thing about a COVID Halloween is that many kids are already used to wearing masks. At least the masks they’re wearing these days are more comfortable than the ones we used to have to wear as kids.
Remember those elastics that dug into the backs of your ears and inevitably snapped about two houses into your trick-or-treating so you had to hold the stupid thing up in front of your face with one hand?
Gov. Charlie Faker (not a typo) has said trick-or-treating will go on this year, mainly because if it were to be canceled, people would just have large indoor parties, and you know there would be at least one Karen living next door to those parties ready to turn everyone else in.
The governor did manage to pass the buck, though, saying individual communities could enact stricter Halloween rules, including canceling it outright.
Charlie also suggests that adults who are bringing their kids around trick-or-treating wear a mask — “and not just a Superman or Wonder Woman mask.”
Of course, there is still plenty of time for Charlie to change his mind. You know, there might be a spike, like in Middleton, where one resident tested positive but 133 inmates at the Middleton Jail were positive, too, so the town landed in the dreaded “red zone.”
Or like in North Andover, where an outbreak at Merrimack College — or, more specifically, at one dorm — pushed that town into the red, even though the dorm technically lies in Andover.
Probably not a good idea to trick-or-treat at any jails or dorms.
Makes you wonder how many of the “infected” of Lowell, another red-zone community, are actually students living in dorms at UMass Lowell, or isolated inside one of Lowell’s nursing and assisted-living facilities.
And, for that matter, how many of Billerica’s positive cases are locked behind bars in the Middlesex House of Correction.
Bring your kids out trick-ortreating.
It’s a Saturday, there’s a full moon brewing, and kids still deserve to be kids.
And then, mom and dad, when the kids are tucked in and you’ve disinfected all the candy (yum!) and trick-or-treat is all done, that’s when it’s time for liquor, neat.
Gov. Charlie Faker (not a typo) has said trick-or-treating will go on this year, mainly because if it were to be canceled, people would just have large indoor parties, and you know there would be at least one Karen living next door to those parties ready to turn everyone else in. The governor did manage to pass the buck, though, saying individual communities could enact stricter Halloween rules, including canceling it outright.