13 Reasons I'm a Sad, Sad Trick-or-Treater

Posted at 5:00 AM Oct 10, 2008

By Bonnie Ruberg

October is here, and that means only one thing: Halloween is around the corner. Screw the presidential election, screw the economic crisis, screw anything that's not wrapped in orange and black streamers or made of candy. The best holiday ever invented is only three weeks away!

It's not hard to see why I'm obsessed with Halloween. I'm a dark person with an interest in sex. It's a dark holiday where people dress up sexy. Fall is also my favorite time of year, and October 31st has always been the culmination of that fall-ness, for me at least. At the same time, there's also a side to my obsession that's totally irrational. I see Halloween decorations in the supermarket and my heart starts racing. I'm like a little kid, totally engrossed and inexplicably happy.

Well, normally I am. This year there are some considerable dampers on my ghostly love affair (or my love of ghosts, or something). Here's why I'm bummed instead of thrilled about Halloween 2008:

13. No one trick-or-treats anymore.
When I was a kid growing up in suburban Philadelphia, you could barely drive down the street on Halloween. Trick-or-treaters lined the sidewalks and everyone got into the festivities. These days, ironically, on October 31st suburbia feels more like a ghost town.

12. There are no pumpkin patches here.
These days I live in San Francisco, not Philadelphia, a place where it's not cold enough for growing local pumpkins. That means one of my favorite traditions, heading to a pumpkin patch and picking a few winners for the front porch, has been reduced to heading to Safeway and picking a mini pumpkin from a giant barrel and then putting it on my windowsill. Update: a wonderful reader has just informed me there are actually pumpkin patches here, near Half Moon Bay. Thank you, thank you, thank you, reader!

11. A pumpkin is too big to carry home from the store.
Safeway does sell big pumpkins -- the kind you could hug and love and eventually turn into Jack-o-Lanterns -- but for a twenty-something like me living in a city without a car, lugging one home on the public bus would make this sad Halloween lover just look sadder. Those things have got to weigh 30 pounds!

10. I want candy, but I shouldn't have it.
Part of Halloween preparation is seeing those displays of delicious peanut butter chocolate whatevers individually packaged for trick-or-treaters. I'd love to buy a few bags, put them in a festive bowl, and leave them on the coffee table for my flatmates and I to snack on -- but I know it would only take 24 hours for me to gorge myself and scarf down all the chocolate in the house, in the spirit of Halloween.

9. All my decorations are at home on the East Coast.
Like a good like weirdo, I've been amassing Halloween paraphernalia since the age of four: blow-up pumpkins, cloth ghosts, black-and-orange banners. Breaking that stuff out each year and assembling it wherever I'm living is a ritual as close to my heart as setting up a beloved Christmas tree is for normal humans. Sadly though, since I moved out to the West Coast with only a suitcase to my name, everything is 3,000 miles away.

8. I miss suburbia and its wonderful kitsch.
Driving around a residential neighborhood back East this time of year, you see fake tombstones on lawns, fake cobwebs across walkways, even fake skeletons hanging from porches. Walking around a city you see...the occasional Walgreen's window selling you packs of Halloween candy. Bummer.

7. I especially miss pumpkin leaf bags.
Do you remember those? They're giant and orange and you put all the leaves you raked up inside them so they look like big, jolly pumpkins. If you're from the East Coast and were born around 1985 you sure do!