The New York Inquirer: Strangers with Candy

by Bryan Joiner

I grew up in a town so small that you didn't worry about trick-or-treating because you knew the people you knew, and for all intents and purposes, you knew the people you didn't know.

It was, in other words, the exact opposite of the way it is in New York City. That's why it's hard for me to fathom FDNY Halloween Safety Tip number 17: "Never accept candy from strangers." Strangers are people you don’t know, but even the people you know here are pretty kooky.

Then again, if you can get candy at all in certain parts of NYC, it's a bonus. I know a lot of people who grew up together in Queens, and they say that it's not always a cakewalk doing the candy walk in a real-life version of the United Nations. The Inquirer doodler Dustin Glick put it this way: "It sucks.” The fact is: many ethnic groups don't understand the big deal with a holiday where kids dress like pirates just to get a Charleston Chew, and I can't blame them.

The other strange New York-specific phenomenon is: children’s parents don’t know each other, so they're pretty much limited to trick-or-treating in their buildings and the adjacent ones (amongst a bunch of, yes, strangers). When asked about this practice, one neighborhood mother lamented, “We hardly get any trick-or-treaters. The doormen aren't allowed to let kids from other buildings in now because of this stupid co-op. You have to put your name on a list if you want trick-or-treaters to come, and so far only six names besides me are on it.”

In tiny towns, when you make a friend with someone, you've essentially made your parents friends as well (it works both ways). You've got to be driven everywhere, so the parents meet, and soon enough they're going to lunch together and talking shit behind each other's backs like normal people. Fun!

On Halloween, with my friends we’d pile in one car (the other parent got the night off) and go to another friend's place to work the row of houses next to it before repeating the process until the wee hour of 10 p.m. Then we'd go home and count our winnings, toss aside all the “lower-fat treats” like individually-wrapped packages of pretzels, ginger snaps, graham crackers, and vanilla wafers” that the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recommends, and go to town, Tootsie Roll-style.

I never got sick, which was just as well because I heard crazy stories of kids getting ill from tainted candy. But I also never had to accept candy from a stranger. Here’s the strangest part of all: as a single 28-year-old outsider in an otherwise close-knit neighborhood, now I am the stranger.

Boo!

(Apartment hallway from brownpau's flickr.)