{"id":1081,"date":"2005-11-01T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-02T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinepage.com\/wp\/2005\/11\/01\/halloween-night-in-the-burbs\/"},"modified":"2005-11-01T20:11:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-02T01:11:00","slug":"halloween-night-in-the-burbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/01\/halloween-night-in-the-burbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween night in the burbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>17h30: First kids ring the doorbell. We&rsquo;re very generous with the candy.<\/p>\n<p>18h15: A <a href=\"http:\/\/blork.typepad.com\/blorkblog\/2005\/11\/pimps_hos.html\">14-year-old pimp<\/a> (huge fur jacket and bling) shows up with a 13 year-old ho (bad makeup, tiny skirt). And to think that I made fun of the pimp costume <a href=\"http:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/pimp-my-pumpkin.html\">yesterday<\/a>, believing no one would actually dress as a pimp. &laquo; Trick or treat &raquo; suddenly took a whole other meaning.<\/p>\n<p>18h30 The doorbell rings. I open the door. A tiny kid dressed as Batman looks at me and says: &laquo; Who are YOU? &raquo;<\/p>\n<p>18h35: I see a 3-year-old dressed as a clown jump in place with excitement as I&rsquo;m coming to open the door. &laquo; How cute &raquo;, I think. Turns out he really, really needed to pee. We let him and his mom use the restroom and when he comes out, he yells: &laquo; Where&rsquo;s my candy? &raquo;<\/p>\n<p>18h45: A lovely unicorn trips on the entrance carpet and almost lands in the box of treats. I remember that our house insurance payment is late.<\/p>\n<p>18h46: The doorbell keeps ringing and we&rsquo;re worried we&rsquo;re going to run out of candy, so we get less generous with the portions.<\/p>\n<p>19h15: A 13 year-old prisoner comes in the house, takes a long look around and says: &laquo; Love the house. Love the concept. &raquo; She was the third teenager to make a positive comment about our place. I didn&rsquo;t know kids were into house design so much these days.<\/p>\n<p>19h20: Blork starts eating the candy. I get mad at him.<\/p>\n<p>19h25: I start putting all the Mars bars aside for my personal use.<\/p>\n<p>19h32: A kid actually says &laquo; trick or treat &raquo; in English, which makes the man who thinks he&rsquo;s the only anglo in Longueuil very happy.<\/p>\n<p>19h40: The flow of kids starts slowing down and the night is nice and warm so Blork and I decide to sit on the front steps, eating candy. (Starburst sucks. Yuk.) For the first time in the two years we&rsquo;ve lived here, the neighborhood really feels alive at night. It&rsquo;s nice to see so many people on the street, walking around. &laquo; See &raquo;, I tell Blork, &laquo; the suburbs are not all about cars and Walmarts. &raquo;<\/p>\n<p>19h41: A mini van pulls up. A ninja jumps out, runs up to our house, gets candy, runs back to the van which drives to the next house. We consider putting up a drive-through window for Halloween next year.<\/p>\n<p>19h46: A 16-month-old girl dressed as a pumpkin walks around traumatized, afraid to come near our house, repeating the same words: &laquo; The wolf. The wolf &raquo;. (The horror. The horror.) Her father explains to me that a neighbor dressed as a wolf just scared the hell out of the kid. She&rsquo;ll need years of therapy so we give her lots of candy to compensate. She&rsquo;ll probably become bulimic.<\/p>\n<p>19h59: The doorbell is no longer ringing. Blork is back at the computer, eating Hershey kisses. I turn off the strobe light we had installed to attrack kids and realize that it&rsquo;s made me sick to my stomach &#8211; or was it the candy? I consider getting back to work on the screenplay so I can be justified to eat one more Mars bar (A Mars bar a day at work, rest or play). I decide against working but eat the Mars bar anyway. (They were tiny ones!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>17h30: First kids ring the doorbell. We&rsquo;re very generous with the candy. 18h15: A 14-year-old pimp (huge fur jacket and bling) shows up with a 13 year-old ho (bad makeup, tiny skirt). And to think that I made fun of the pimp costume yesterday, believing no one would actually dress as a pimp. &laquo; Trick&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/01\/halloween-night-in-the-burbs\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Halloween night in the burbs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}