All dressed up…

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This article was published 01/11/2022 (1418 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Freddy Krueger and a clown were sitting in the front yard, having a one-on-one around the bonfire. Below her rainbow hairline, the clown had a real smile on her lips and a fake one painted on her face.

She was having a nice chat. With Freddy’s white hockey mask (more Friday the 13th than Nightmare on Elm Street) obscuring his mouth, it was harder to tell if the feeling was mutual.

Down the street, on a corner in Wolseley, a jellyfish no taller than a park bench wiggled along the sidewalk, its translucent skin filled with miniature lights that oscillated between pink and red. Wearing blue overalls atop green and red sweaters, Mario and Luigi strutted behind, carrying their toilet plungers and hopefully keeping them far away from their chocolate.

On the next block, Spider-Man crawled from house to house, lifting his mask to reveal his true identity: a six-year-old boy eating licorice. Iron Man bit into a Snickers. A gorilla chomped on a pack of Mentos.

A mother and daughter sat in their front yard from dinner until nightfall, with the moon floating in the sky — half-light, half-dark. The mother didn’t want to give her last name, because she didn’t want to divulge too much personal information, but shared her first name with trepidation. “It’s Terry,” she said, wearing a polar bear sweater that matched her daughter’s. “We’re in Wolseley,” I joked. “I think there’s one or two Terrys around here.”

Terry isn’t much of a Halloween person. She admits she doesn’t remember any of the costumes her daughter wore growing up. But tonight, she watched the jellyfish and the Mario Brothers and lions and monkeys and cowboys go by. She saw a street alive and ruled by kids, not cars.

So too did Leah Pederson, out for a walk with her Siberian husky, Rex. This Halloween felt better. It felt more full, she said. There were kids, like her grandson Luca, who turns three in December, who never had a Halloween like this, or any at all. “It was something he hasn’t gotten,” she said, showing a picture of the toddler, dressed like a firefighter and standing next to a hydrant only slightly taller than he is.

Mark Klassen says he has historically been whatever Halloween’s version of a humbug is. But this year, his sour tooth turned sweet. His front stoop was enshrouded in a transparent tunnel, spray-painted with spiders and pumpkins, and his yard was guarded by gourds. His partner, Haley Carr, was sitting next to him, an hour after her son — dressed as Venom — returned and dumped his chocolates on the ground in the centre of the room. “We’ve all done that,” she said.

But the ceremonial chocolate allocation didn’t happen quite as much last year, or the year before. There were so few kids expected at Klassen’s house in 2020 that he bought less candy than ever. This year, at least 300 tiny voices called out “trick or treat.”

The owners of three of those voices rolled nearby in their strollers, turning the corner of their final street of the night. One voice belonged to John, a three-year-old boy who likes to speak French. Another to Lincoln, a two-year-old who likes to keep to himself. And the third to Logan, who, at one year old, can’t quite participate in an interview yet.

John and Lincoln were dressed as pretty princesses, and were very happy about it. Their parents, Cecily and Lyndon, were too. “They wanted to be princesses,” Cecily said with a laugh. “I said OK.”

For all three brothers, this year’s was the first Halloween. Last year, they were too little; two years ago, two of them didn’t exist. Now, John is three. He can talk. He can run.

John was looking forward to Halloween. He had heard of it, but never experienced it. The prospect of free candy appealed to him. He held in his hand a miniature bag of Doritos, his fingers dusted with orange. He held out the bag to a reporter. “Chip?” John offered.

The reporter had to weigh the ethics of the situation. Did the acceptance of this gift violate his journalistic integrity and training, or was he hungry enough to forget about the rules?

The reporter reached out and John forked over the Doritos bag. Empty. John laughed as he reached into his candy bag, searching with both hands for his next treat.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com