Dads

I was zoom-scrolling Lemmy on my phone, saw this post, almost passed it. Had to stop though.

I'm older, never been into Halloween. I have fun passing out candy, which suits my family fine. I don't like makeup and costumes feelweird to me.

Thanks to therapy I came to realize that I had a lot of trauma pertaining to clothing and my appearance that I never quite recognized nor addressed. You see, I was bullied and physically assaulted relentlessly in school because my clothes were never the right brand, color, or style. My parents had five other kids besides me so there wasn't a ton of money to buy the latest trendy shit from whatever store even sells that stuff. To this day I buy everything from one store that I'm comfortable with, where clothes fit and look good on me. For that reason I'm still conservative when it comes to clothes because for so long I attributed dressing differently as being physically punished.

However this year I think I am going to be adventurous and dress up as my celeb look-alike. I have one in mind and for once I am go to just enjoy myself and let loose a bit.

House is decorated like it’s Christmas, but with ghouls and pumpkins, including lights in the windows, which are on in the evening for a couple of weeks before the event. We use them like traffic lights on Halloween night; if they’re on then we’re open for business and then later they’re off to signal we’re done, stop bothering us. Lit pumpkins on the doorstep also have the same effect. Early evening we take the kids out and leave a bowl of sweets on the doorstep so nobody leaves empty handed. At this time it’s usually supervised kids, so no issues with the whole lot disappearing.

Teenager is too cool for it, so the wife and I are hiding upstairs and eating all the sweets.

Our little boy has a milk allergy (tbh I suspect he may have grown out of it but haven’t put that to the test yet) - so we’ve gone to our neighbours and given them some vegan chocolate. That way we can take the little one next door for a little bit of trick or treating.

We haven’t decorated but he absolutely loves going past the houses that have gone to the effort “giant spider! Spooky Skeleton!” “Ghosty!!!” hard to be grumpy at a holiday when the little ones are enjoying it so much.