It’s the end of October – the air has turned crisp, and there are many colorful leaves decorating the ground, and so that can mean only one thing: The Super Bowl pre-game show is about to start, even though the professional football season is not even halfway over yet.
No, what it really means is that it’s Halloween, thereby greatly increasing the odds that at some point within the last week – and this is especially true if you’re a parent – you spent some time up to your elbows in pumpkin innards. Hopefully you were carving jack-o’-lanterns at the time.
However, the most important thing you must remember when carving jack-o’-lanterns is not to watch “Martha Stewart Living,” where a recent episode featured an expert pumpkin carver, which is apparently a real job.
In keeping with the Martha Stewart tradition of making you feel bad by comparison, the expert pumpkin carver proved himself to be a true artist, etching amazingly realistic portraits on the provided gourds.
As part of the impossible standards that are a hallmark of “Martha Stewart Living,” future holiday segments will include “The Eerily Perfect Thanksgiving Dinner” and “How to Knit a Christmas Sweater From Saved-up Belly Button Lint.”
But don’t let Martha get you down, because there are more pressing concerns to worry about when it comes to Halloween.
Actually, safety is the most important aspect of Halloween, a holiday where the central activity involves dressing up children in sight-restricting costumes and sending them out at night to beg for candy from strangers.
There are plenty of articles that provide Halloween safety advice for kids, and this isn’t one of them. Instead, here are some tips for adults when it comes to Halloween:
4 Hiding in the shadows in order to jump out and scare kids might sound like harmless fun on Halloween, but remember, these days you don’t know which kids are packin’ heat.
4 Don’t hand out healthy snacks like fruits and vegetables to trick-or-treaters, as kids hate this and will use the fruits and vegetables to “redecorate” your home. The same goes for that orange candy shaped like a giant peanut that nobody likes.
4 Parents are entitled to a cut of their children’s Halloween haul. To maximize your take, make sure your kids have something large in which to collect their candy, like a wheel barrow.
4 Be sure to have plenty of tranquilizers on hand in order to deal with kids hopped up on sugar for the next few weeks. Also, have a first-aid kit around in order to deal with any possible candy overdoses.
4 If you don’t want to be bothered by trick-or-treaters, go out and look at all the pretty Christmas decorations that were put up way too early in some stores.
But seriously, during these trying times, have a safe and happy Halloween. And speaking of trying times, remember, Christmas is less than two months away…