Dead Quiet for Halloween.

No children again this year for Halloween, out here in the country, Halloween is dead and not the spooky dead like ghosts, the boring end of an era kind of dead. It's what happens when the breeders don't breed, no children. It used to be that people would drive to the neighbors but not anymore, everyone heads for the nearest village and drops the kids off. Even people in the villages notice the difference. My aunt living closest to me, used to get around two hundred kids, a lot for a small village, now however she only gets twenty to thirty. Last year I had two kids but I cheated, I text the mom to stop in on her way past my house, not counting those two it has probably been twenty to twenty-five years since the last child. Oh well, I guess that I will just have to eat these delicious mini chocolate bars. I was a bit of a procrastinator getting them, just this afternoon is when I bought them. All the stores had moved the candy and Halloween displays near the doors... because as usual they were frantically filling the shelves with Christmas items. ................................................. I remember my last Halloween, I was ten or eleven, it was a rite of passage for us to stop around that age in my area, a sign of maturity, unlike the city kids, a person would be called a baby if they were in high school and still trick or treating. My sister had started high school so she was no longer interested in going and my father said he wasn't going to just take me. A friend living close by, invited me to join her and her brother. That evening I had a lot of fun, we rode in the back of a pickup and her mother would drop us off and just let us go to work, walking up and down the streets and then taking us to another part of the Village, this was new to me. My father would only let us go to seven or eight houses, he always seemed embarrassed by us trick or treating, to him it was almost a form of begging. I remember it being really warm that last night and the moon was shining. We finished our candy quest and decided to ride home in the back of the truck, (something kids would not be allowed to do now). I remember leaving the Village and looking up at the sky, hoping to see a bat or an owl, something Halloween-ish, maybe even a witch's silhouette against the moon light. I remember also taking in the moment that this was my last Halloween to trick or treat, I also remember thinking that growing up sucks!