Tag Archives: trick-or-treat

Trick-or-Treat Costs Arm and Leg

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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Boo! Here is something scarier than any ghost or goblin or ghoul: according to the National Retail Federation, this year Americans will spend $700 million on Halloween costumes…

…for their pets!

Yes, Halloween is literally going to the dogs—and cats.

As for humans, the projected figure to be spent on costumes in 2024 is $3.7 billion, plus $3.8 billion for decorations and $3.5 billion for candy—the latter figure does not include dental bills six months down the Candy Cane Lane. All told, according to the NRF, this works out to $103 per person, a tick down from a record $108 a year ago.

Spiderman is expected to be children’s top costume of choice this year followed by ghost, princess, and witch. Not surprisingly, witch will again rank as the top outfit for adults followed by vampire, cat, Batman, pirate, and a swollen number of Shrunken Head Bob from the new cult movie sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

As for pets, the NRF says the most popular costumes will be four-legged pumpkins, hot dogs, bats, bumblebees, ghosts, and spiders. Personally, I have loved eight dogs in my life, but have spent the same on costumes for all of them combined that my parents did on costumes for my three siblings and me growing up: zero, zilch, zip, not a dime.

You see, back in the 1960s, kid Baby Boomers made costumes with empty boxes and paint, bed sheets and old clothes, this and that, maybe some face makeup, and imagination.

Instead of store-bought costumes from a box, here are some outside-the-box Halloween outfits I would like to see knocking on my door next Thursday evening:

Shohei Ohtani dressed up like Superman and the rest of the Dodgers, dusting off a four-year-old costume stored in an attic trunk, as World Series champions.

Speaking of superheroes, I’d love to see firemen, nurses, police officers, and teachers dress up as members of the Justice League.

Every cancer patient dressed up as cured.

Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri costumed as helpful librarians, and vice-versa.

The new iPhone16 dressed up as a rotary rPhone1960 model.

Similarly, a family out for meal in a restaurant all costumed as Amish Mennonites without everyone having his or her attention focused on smartphone screens.

Throwaway plastic milk jugs dressed up as bygone “Leave It To Beaver” milkman-era returnable glass bottles.

All the current election yard signs dressed up as recycled trash.

Congress dressed up with “Will Work For Food” signs.

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard costumed as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Every drunk driver dressed up as a taxi, Uber or Lyft passenger.

The Lakers’ father-son duo LeBron and Bronny James as Methuselah and Lamech.

Jack In The Box pitchman Jack dressed up as Ronald McDonald, and vice-versa.

SoCal weather dressed up as rainy Seattle and more specifically Ventura County’s brown hillsides in costumes as Ireland’s emerald landscape.

My laptop keyboard as John Steinbeck’s Hermes Baby typewriter.

Coming full circle to pets, I wish every shelter dog and cat could dress up as a pumpkin or hot dog or bumblebee whilesleeping on a newly adopted lap.

Lastly, according to a CandyStore.com survey, the least popular candy—“bottom of the Halloween barrel” is the description used—handed out this year promises to be the same as when I last went Trick-or-Treating: spongy yet stale banana-flavored yet oddly pale-orange-colored marshmallow Circus Peanuts.

Which reminds me of the proper way to eat Circus Peanuts: tear the package open, toss them in the trash, then enjoy this year’s most preferred Trick-or-Treat treat: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Happy For Trick-or-Treaters Return!

by Woody

“If you can blow this balloon up with one breath you win a brand-new Cadillac,” the doctor told me just before I was to have my tonsils removed.

Considering I would not be old enough to get a driver’s license for another 12 years I would have preferred the promise of a toy Matchbox car. All the same, I accepted the challenge and inhaled the deepest breath of my young life . . .

. . . and woke up in a hospital bed wondering when the operation was going to happen.

“It’s all over,” my mom told me. “Do you want some ice cream to soothe your throat?”

I have since had more surgeries than I care to remember – wisdom teeth, kidney stone, entrapped nerve, deviated septum, cervical disc fusion – and each time I emerged from anesthesia’s fog I could not believe time had passed and the operation had already taken place.

That is sort of how I feel about the past year and half during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like it was spring of 2019 and I took a deep breath of anesthesia and suddenly I have awakened to autumn 2021.

Instead of having my tonsils or a kidney stone removed, I had birthday celebrations and holidays gatherings, concerts and vacations, all removed from the calendar. I bet you feel likewise.

Perhaps the best example I can give is a wedding of some young friends. One day my wife and I were ready to go to the big event and the next thing you know we were attending the reception for their pandemic-altered marriage ceremony that had actually taken place on Zoom over a year ago. And yet at the grand and greatly belated in-person celebration it seemed as if they had just said their vows minutes earlier.

I don’t know about you, but one of the biggest events I missed while being under pandemic-thesia was Halloween. Perhaps more than any holiday, Halloween is a time machine that transports me happily backwards. Hearing little voices sing “trick-or-treat” reminds me of walking my own two kids around the neighborhood.

Halloween also magically transports me to my own youth. Indeed, seeing a tiny Batman makes my mind flash back to when I taped a yellow bat insignia on a black sweatshirt and pinned a bath towel around my neck to go trick-or-treating when I was six. Age seven, too, for I loved Batman.

Trick-or-treaters at my front door pull up memories from a couple years later when my best friend Dan and I finished our rounds and then changed into second costumes before going back to the houses that were giving out full-sized candy bars.

Even my bad Halloween memories have become good ones with the passing of time. Like when Adam stole my pillowcase loaded with sugary bounty. To clarify, Adam wasn’t a boy bully, he was a black Labrador the size of a grizzly who lived in our neighborhood. Even though he was a gentle giant, when he came running at me I dropped my loot instead of taking any chances with his sweet tooth.

Because of coronavirus, not unleashed Adams, no little princesses and superheroes and goblins came knocking on my door last Halloween. Happily, this promises to change Saturday evening because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given children the green light to again go trick-or-treating.

I cannot wait. My porch light will be welcomingly on and I’ll have a wheelbarrow’s load of full-sized candy bars ready to hand out, two at a time, to make up for last year.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Sweet Treat Follows Halloween

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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A Sweet Treat

Follows Halloween

Out of precaution, but with small expectation, we bought a single bag of candy bars in case any trick-or-treaters came by Halloween evening. In years past we have handed out 20 bags.

Coronavirus kept our doorbell silent as a tombstone.

It’s easy to jokingly snicker, “Great! I’ll just have to eat all these Snickers myself.” But the truth is I felt empty because autumn’s annual parade of kids singing “Trick or treat!” as their goodie sacks and plastic pumpkin buckets fill up, fills my heart.

Imagine the cutest costumed child of the night knocking on your door after the porch light has been turned off and you get an idea of what happened to me. In this case, it was a day later and two young girls were dressed up as themselves – as the cutest two siblings imaginable.

I am guessing their ages to be 3 and 5 and they were at a local park with their parents enjoying a late-afternoon picnic. Meanwhile, I was on my daily run and seeing them each half-mile loop around put a smile on my face and extra spring in my stride.

I wish you could have seen them. The girls played catch with their dad and tag with their mom; played by themselves while their parents snuggled on the spread-out blanket; joined mom and dad for a snack, and a hug, before racing off to pet a dog on a leash; and on and on their fun went.

Just as Halloween is a time machine that pulls us back to our own childhoods, these two children sent my mind racing in reverse 25 years to when my daughter and son were about their ages.

Instead of on a blanket in a park, our young family of four was having dinner at a charming Italian restaurant. After the spaghetti and meatballs disappeared, and scoops of ice cream too, our waiter vanished. The kids grew antsy as we waited for the check. Ten minutes became thirty and my wife and I became impatient as well.

“Where’s the check?” I grumbled softly.

“Where’s our waiter?” my wife mumbled.

“Where’s the bathrooms?” the kids needed to know.

Our waiter remained AWOL. Eventually, finally, at long last I caught the attention of a different server and asked if he could please get our check.

Instead of the check, our original waiter brought us a heartwarming explanation: Two elderly gentlemen at a table across the room had paid for our dinner, but requested the waiter not let us know until after they left – hence the long delay.

The Samaritan pair had seen a happy young family, our waiter explained, and simply wanted to anonymously do a random act of kindness. Ever since, I have occasionally tried to repay those kind men when I have seen happy young families in restaurants.

And so it was that I wished I could have paid the dinner check for the two girls and their parents at the park. Instead, all I could think to do was stop by before I left and tell them something they already well knew – what a lovely family they are!

This led to a brief social-distanced visit where I learned the sisters are inseparable, even sharing a bed by choice, and that a third sibling is on the way.

As I jogged away into the early arriving darkness, the two girls sang out in sweet harmony: “Have a nice day!”

“Thank you!” I shouted back. “You, too!”

What I thought was this: “Thanks to you, I already have.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Halloween Suggestions

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW!

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Trick-or-Treaters I’d Like to See

Spoiler alert for tonight. According to Google Freightgeist, the 10 most-popular Halloween costumes nationwide this year are: Harley Quinn, Star Wars, Superhero, Pirate, Batman, Minnie Mouse, Witch, Minions, Joker, and Wonder Woman.

Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn

I don’t know about you, but this list raised a couple questions for me, the first being: Who, or what, is Harley Quinn? A new motorcycle? After a Google search I learned that Harley Quinn, aka Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, M.D., is a DC Comics character and adversary of Batman.

As for her why her costume ranks No. 1, well, I’m guessing adult women more than girls account for this as Quinn is basically The Joker version of The Sexy Nurse costume.

My second question: Isn’t it redundant for Google Freightgeist to list “Superhero” when Batman and Wonder Woman are also ranked? And where in he world is Superman?

Google Freightgeist also has an interesting map showing popularity by region and city. Ventura does not appear, but Santa Barbara’s Top 5 are: Sexy Pirate, Sexy Snow White, Sexy Lion, Sexy Gray Wolf, and Sexy Doll. (Note: I added the Sexy after Googling these costumes that are obviously marketed for women.)

Indeed, unlike when I was a kid, Halloween has become a national holiday for adults, too. If you can believe it, pets now also get in on the fun with Batman and Lion being the two most popular costumes this year on eBay.

When I was a kid, no one bought Halloween costumes for their pets or children. You made do. For example, my Batman costume consisted of thermal underwear as Bat-Tights and a bath towel pinned around my neck.

In that same spirit, instead of sterile costumes from a box, here are some outside-the-box Halloween outfits I’d like to see come knocking on my door tonight:

Real superhero firemen, paramedics and nurses dressed up as cartoon superheroes with capes.

Teachers, and most especially special-needs educators, same as above.

Superman, Batman and Iron Man dressed up as Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, the three American tourists who helped thwart a terrorist gunman on a train bound for Paris earlier this summer.

Vin Scully wearing a headset as a guest in Fox TV’s broadcast booth for the 2015 World Series.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia dressed up again in a Dodgers uniform.

The 2015 New York Mets dressed up as the Amazin’ Mets of 1969.

The Cubs dressed as World Series Champions.

Malala Yousafzai dressed up as the future President of the United Nations.

Donald Trump dressed up as a mime and Dr. Ben Carson as an over-caffeinated high-energy TV pitchman.

Bernie Sanders as, of course, Larry David.

Every presidential candidate in both parties dressed up as someone taking a lie-detector test.

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who put a 5,000 percent markup on a lifesaving drug, dressed as greedy Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Or as a thief in jail stripes.

Kobe Bryant dressed in his rookie Lakers uniform, complete with young, springy legs.

Tom Brady in a costume as a deflated football.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell dressed up as a concussion patient.

1tricktreatA family out for dinner in a restaurant dressed as Amish Mennonites instead of everyone having his or her attention focused on a smartphone screen.

No one in costume as Caitlyn Jenner.

Mrs. Figs’ Bookworm owner Connie Halpern dressed as Oprah because she’s equally effervescent and a book reader’s best friend.

Roger Thompson, Venturan author of “My Best Friend’s Funeral,” dressed up as a New York Times best-selling writer.

Drew Daywalt, local author of two children’s books currently atop the NYT Best Sellers List with “The Day The Crayons Came Home” at No. 1 and “The Day The Crayons Quit” at No. 3, dressed up as, of course, a crayon.

The USDA Food Pyramid dressed up as a Fourth of July red-white-and-blue paper plate stacked with hotdogs, bacon and cold cuts.

KVTA radio early-morning host Tom Spence dressed as The Tonight Show’s late-night host Jimmy Fallon because Spence is funnier.

Every drunk driver dressed up as a taxi, Uber or Lyft passenger.

Lastly, my wife as Harley Quinn.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.Wooden&Me_cover_PR

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”