The Nostalgic Nose: Trick or Treaters Bring a Mixed Bag of Memories
I love any excuse to dress up and celebrate. A holiday, an event, a milestone, any reason to get fancy or don a costume. Certainly, Halloween is the best of those opportunities.
For parents, it’s one of the easiest holidays to prepare for…but does create the problem of what to do with the leftover candy.
Add it to lunchboxes? Teachers won’t like you.
Hand out to coworkers? Nah. You’ll be the only one eating it.
Freeze it? Nope, doesn’t remove the temptation. Turns out chocolate can be eaten frozen solid.
The scale always wins this fight…with a very scary outcome!
The scariest Halloween I remember as a kid involved my two older brothers who bought Frankenstein and Dracula masks weeks before Halloween. To make sure their friends would be thoroughly impressed, they would “practice” by scaring me. With masks on, they would stealth up the carpeted staircase, turn the corner to my room where I would be reading or cleaning and yell “Boo!” Each time, I came unglued, crying and reflexively hitting or kicking them, ready for a fight despite my blind tears.
Maybe because of that memory, I’m now all about the softer side of Halloween. I become a fairy godmother when working the door. Most of my neighbors don’t leave their porch lights on - in my town, an unlit porch means “NO CANDY HERE.” Consequently, I get the lion’s share of those delightful little goblins, devils, princesses, cartoon characters, sports figures, and dinosaurs ringing my doorbell, screaming “Twick or Tweet!”
I love it when four or five of them call it out in unison. Priceless.
One particularly astute trick or treater, a young pirate at my door noted “What is that smell?” He was standing on my porch peering inside but, at the moment of declaring his observation, let himself in! This brazen move caught me off guard and rendered me temporarily speechless. By the time I had collected myself, he said, “It’s so nice in here. It smells like pumpkin and fall and all stuff like that.”
I pointed to my tabletop scent diffuser which was filling the room with a blend of pumpkin and fall scents. He said, “Oh, that’s cool,” and then, “Do you think I would be able to get some more candy for my brother who couldn’t trick or treat this year?”
“Sure,” I said seeing the opportunity to avoid my leftover candy issue. “Take a handful.”
“That’s really nice of you, and you know,” he said bringing his finger to the side of his head “now that I think about it, my sister didn’t get to come out either. My Mom said she is too old to trick or treat anymore. Soooo, would it be okay if I took some more for her, too?” He delivered with eyes wide open and just a tiny bit of tongue-tied spittle spraying from his fake bearded face. I couldn’t resist.
I would later learn that he, his brother, AND his sister, worked the neighborhood individually with similar stories about why their siblings couldn’t get out to collect candy. I had been pirated!
Years later, I’m still charmed by the memory of that spunky little buccaneer and still putting those classic scents of pumpkin & spice into my Belle Aroma® ScenTrio Petite® Wax Warmer inside my front door.
“Yo ho ho!”
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Jean Greco for Belle Aroma® Brand