A Normal Halloween for Once
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Last night we took my daughter trick or treating with a friend and my son went out with his friends. Both my son and daughter have done trick or treating prior to this with a group of people, but it was always family.
Then 2020 happened. My daughter was five and my son was eight. The past two Halloween's have been very downsized. We did a family thing in 2020. We had the kids go from room to room in our home and had them tell jokes to get candy. We did as much as we could to give them as "normal" a Halloween as we could. 2021 was not much different. We let the kids trick or treat, but it was just within our neighborhood. They did go to other houses, but they were masked, as were we, and we only hit, maybe, a dozen houses before calling it.
This year was different though. My wife and I recently got our Omicron boosters. Our kids got them last week. My folks have theirs, although we did not see them last night. Most of our school family friends have their boosters. What I am trying to say is, this is probably the most normal Halloween my kids have had in their short lives. My son might remember some Halloween's pre COVID, but I bet he will remember this one for a long, long time. We let him go out with friends last night. He went with a big group of kids he goes to school with. He got to do his own thing. He went to a friend's house, all the other boys met there and they went out on the town on their own. When I picked him up he was thrilled and exhausted. He kept talking about his great night and would end each story with how tired he was. He was in one of the best moods of his life to this point. He was on cloud nine. My wife and I took our seven year old to a friend's house and we stayed to hang out with the parents. The parents are friends of ours and our kids are as close as it gets. So we went over there after dropping my son off. We had pizza together. My wife made a fun drink for the adults, minus me, to have. The kids helped hand out candy before we took them all over the neighborhood. They hit a ton of houses. I usually take Monday off of running, and I did yesterday, but I was still well over 12,000 steps for the day. These girls had us going everywhere. And we saw so many kids out and about. Some were with folks, others were with friends and some were just doing their thing. It was wonderful to see. I fully understand that we are still fully in this pandemic. The winter is probably going to be rough. But last night was like a breath of fresh air for me. It was so cool to see kids out and about. It is made easier since Halloween is generally an outside holiday. You trick or treat outside. Haunted houses are outside. Theme park Fright Fests are outdoors. It is much easier and safer to be outside. I was just happy that my kids got to do Halloween right. It made me happy. It felt like old times last night doing things I used to do pre COVID.
Again, I fully understand we are not out of this, we may never be, but things seem to be returning, or finding some kind of new normal. I was almost as happy as my son last night. Almost. Halloween was a real success last night. The first real successful holiday since COVID came along. I hope we can ride this momentum for some time now because it makes me happy.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.
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