No, this wasn’t our house, but an office party I ran across a couple weeks ago.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: each year since 2008 I’ve kept statistics on the number of trick-or-treaters brave enough to approach our suburban Indianapolis doorstep during the Halloween celebration of neighborhood unity and no-strings-attached strangers with candy. I began tracking our numbers partly for future candy inventory purposes and partly out of curiosity, so now it’s a tradition for me. Like many bloggers I’m a stats fiend who thrives on taking head counts, even when we’re expecting discouraging results.

Previous years’ Halloween candy-receiver totals were as follows:

2008: 51
2009: 105
2010: 112
2011: 74
2012: 58
2013: 36
2014: 25
2015: 39
2016: 23
2017: 59
2018: 38
2019: 14
2020: 53
2021: 41
2022: 58
2023: 29

Our fifth consecutive year tabling outside our house on Halloween night.

This year’s results during our city’s official trick-or-treating hours of 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.:

First TOTer arrival time: 6:10 p.m.
Final TOTer departure time: 8:08 p.m.
Total number of trick-or-treaters for 2024: 32
Gain/loss from Halloween 2023: +9.67%

Lowe’s was once again killing it in the outdoor monsters section back in early September.

I’m glad our attendance figures topped last year’s, even if by only a tiny margin. What kills me is we had fantastic weather all week long. We’ve hardly had any rainfall the past few weeks. But ever since last weekend, the extended forecast kept prophesying storms would come and temps would plunge today and only today before returning to summertime levels the next day. Sure enough, around 9 a.m. or so, torrents slammed into our city for a few hours — mind you, not as fiercely or as tragically as the rains in Spain. Rains came and went, finally petering out around 3:30. We feared such an extended grey day would cancel the night, that no parents would compulsively check the skies in hopes of sensing a window of opportunity to lead their kids outside and around the blocks for some spooky holiday spirit.

By 6:00 the clouds were a little lighter and nary a drop of water could be felt. The two of us stuck to our Plan A, once again using the setup we devised for 2020 — we sit outside in front of our porch in lawn chairs at a large table, display baggies of candy on it and let each kid pick one. It’s easier than constantly being interrupted by the doorbell and going back and forth between the living room and the door, again and again and again. It kept us from our streaming shows tonight, but it gets us in a better position to exchange more than a single sentence of dialogue between each guest. Halloween feels a little more interactive that way, more welcoming than hiding.

Despite sitting right there in the open, early on we could tell the lousy weather had been pretty discouraging. For our first hour, we had five whole kids. Parents outnumbered them nearly two-to-one. One toddler was accompanied by six grown-ups, no doubt all excited to witness the kid’s very first Halloween.

Our moods lightened as traffic picked up over the next half-hour. Folks were emerging from shelter, suiting up their wee ones and seizing the opportunity for at least a little merriment. Some barely costumed teens did likewise, which we don’t mind. As a wise dude once said, sometimes the most important thing in life is showing up.

Then at 7:40 it started raining again. We refused to quit. Exactly one minute later, two teens came up, hit their marks, said their lines and got rewarded anyway. We put away the lawn chairs, stood on our small porch — which is in a sort of recessed cubbyhole, enough to shelter us — remained on duty and kept hope alive. 10-15 minutes later, the rain dried up yet again. Five more kids came along before I turned out the porch light at 8:20. There’re always a couple of teenage stragglers running late. At least it didn’t start snowing, like it did last year.

Target gamely gets into Halloween displaying to the extent that they’re permitted to express any overt holiday cheer.

As always, MCC extends an extra-special salute to those stalwart winners who understood the true meaning of Halloween and weren’t afraid of fresh air. The cosplayers whose raiment we could discern (including some parents and chaperones!) registered as follows:

nurse
dancer
astronaut
schoolgirl (possibly not a costume)
princess
devil/sorceress
Navy SEAL
doggy
bunny
scarecrow
creepy bald man?
2 skeletons
2 guys in hoodies and COVID masks
3 clowns
banana
Shrek
Fiona
Chucky
Where’s Waldo
Jack Skellington
prequel Cruella
Beanie Baby squirrel
Leonardo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Ladybug from Miraculous
Puggy Wuggy from Poppy Playtime
four adults in orange T-shirts reading “PRETEND I’M A CARROT”

…and one girl proudly cosplaying as her own dad. He hung back at the edge of the yard — same distinctive hairdo, mustache and beard. She nailed it.

We were surprised when another girl recognized Anne from seeing her around at Sunday school. And we awarded bonus points to yet another girl who thanked us for her baggie of candy, began to return to her parents, braked, came back and handed Anne two pieces of candy from her own sack. That was a first.

Little moments like these are the best part and the whole point.

I was out of office for a week and returned to find this lightly decorated, unexplained cat pumpkin just sitting, waiting, watching, and weirding me out. To this day no perpetrator has confessed or explained.