Back in the day, my grandmother kept a running tally of how many little kiddies (and not-so-little kiddies) showed up at her door for their share of the Halloween treasure. The numbers routinely broke into triple digits, and there was always a sufficient supply of Milky Ways, Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, and Butterfingers to meet the demand. No little Steve Canyon wannabe ever retreated down those creaky front porch steps wearing a frown under his mask.

Sometimes she and my grandfather could tell whose footsteps were pounding up the treads simply by glancing over Cinderella’s tiara at the car waiting in the street. Other times they had no earthly idea whence these tykes came. Some were noisy, others not so. A few revealed their smiling identities willingly with a flip of their masks. Others raced away before the Squirrel Nut Zippers had time to settle in their bags.

Two or three times in the evening, a lull restored some peaceful silence, but only for a few moments. My grandparents would peek out the kitchen window to find the neighbors’ homes under attack by yet another band of roaming, pint sized gremlins. Soon it would be their door that would open once again to more screams of “Trick or Treat!!!”

My grandmother never wanted to be first to close up shop for the night. So when Mr. B, a neighbor, put his porch into darkness, it wasn’t long before the other porch lamps, one by one, were extinguished up and down the street.

After my grandfather passed on in the mid 1980s, I made a point to visit my grandmother on Halloween nights so that she wouldn’t be opening the door by herself. In those years, the head count began to drop after some lunatic started handing out apples for Trick or Treet, if you know what I mean. Still, it was fun to see and hear happy, carefree kids being superheroes, filling their bags and pumpkin pails with candy of all kinds.

If I could have chosen an age for my dx, it would have been, oh, 104. Short of that option, 23 didn’t turn out so bad. I wasn’t so old that I couldn’t adjust easily to dealing with this disease, nor was I so young as to have missed out on the enjoyment of a bag of Halloween candy. I am thankful to have been spared both of those unattractive circumstances.

If you’re taking the kiddies out this evening, here’s a short safety quiz from Hershey’s designed to teach the little ones how to stay safe this Halloween. Your young goblin can even print out a certificate after answering all the questions.