There are some holidays for adults, there are some for children — and there are some for both. Halloween is one of those holidays that appeals to both children and adults.

For children, it is a time for going door to door in a mask and demanding that your neighbors give you something. Kinda like armed robbery, but with a sweet tooth. For adults, it’s a time to get together with fellow otherwise rational adults and put on goofy costumes and act like fools for a night.

I liked Halloween as a kid. I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore where everyone knew their neighbors and there were four streets we would trick-or-treat on. Every kid in the neighborhood went to every door in the neighborhood and got candy.

The sidewalks were crowded with children in all kinds of costumes from the simplest homemade hobo costume to the most elaborate storebought kind. Mom would always get us something somewhere in between. Usually it was an oversized nylon thing that sorta resembled a popular cartoon or television character. It was baggy, never fit just right and would be hotter than any hazmat suit.

The mask was made of plastic and had a microscopic hole from which we were supposed to breathe. The rubber strap that was supposed to hold it on always broke and you wound up running around the neighborhood with the mask in your hand until you got to a door.

“Trick or treat, smell my feet! Give me somethin’ good to eat!”

Someone would come to the door, comment on how cute we looked, and toss a coupla small candy pieces into our bag. Most of the time it was “fun size” candy. I don’t know who figured that a Snickers the size of a gumball was “fun,” but they were wrong. A Snickers is fun when it’s the size of a loaf of bread.

There were Mary Janes, Sugar Daddies and Clark bars. You could count on BB Bats taffy lollipops, Dum-Dum lollipops and Tootsie Pops. When it came to the Tootsie Pops, the chocolate ones were my favorite. Double Bubble and Bazooka ran neck and neck to see what the most popular bubble gum was. Mounds and Almond Joy were equally popular.

You felt like a millionaire when you had found a bunch of $100,000 Bars in your bag. In my day, there were only two kinds of M&Ms — plain or peanut. It didn’t matter which kind you liked, you could always trade later.

There were the people who gave little boxes of raisins. You still knocked on their door, though. It would be impolite and disrespectful if you didn’t go to every door. You didn’t have to like the raisins, but you took them and smiled and said thank you.

There was an older guy at the end of our block who gave big red apples instead of candy. There wasn’t any concern about taking the apples in those days. You could trust that the man at the end of the block got only the best apples to give to all the kids. I don’t remember him having kids of his own, but he certainly made sure we got the best apples around on Halloween.

I ran the streets with my brother and we collected enough candy to give Willy Wonka a stomachache. We would get home and compare and trade what he liked and I liked and what we didn’t like. In the next few days, we would consume all the favorites, then the next favorites, and so on down the popularity scale until there were a handful of pieces that remained in a bowl in the kitchen until Christmas.

Halloween for adults is different. Especially these days. My wife and I were invited to a Halloween party, so we decided we would see what kind of costumes were available for adults. We soon discovered for my wife that there is a “sexy” everything.

There is the sexy nurse, the sexy nun, the sexy schoolteacher, the sexy police officer, the sexy firefighter and the sexy astronaut. Whoever decided the “Sexy Hillary Clinton” costume was a good idea, though, overestimated the lengths people would go to spend $35.

My choices weren’t much better. There is a Homer Simpson costume that is inflatable. Built into the costume is a little electric fan that inflates the costume into a reasonably accurate portrayal of Homer’s measurements. Since most adult parties involve the consumption of alcohol, I can’t imagine the combination of Budweiser and a small propeller within close proximity of my nether regions is a good one.

We have decided to make our costumes out of items found at home. I think we are trendsetters, and “exhausted middle aged couple” is going to be all the rage as far as costumes go.

Our daughters are too old to trick-or-treat now. Our youngest is a teenager and our oldest is an adult with a child of her own.

We live in a neighborhood where there are few trick-or-treaters. We still turn the porch light on and hand out candy to the few kids who visit our house. We tell the kids how great their costumes are and we smile and hold out a big bowl of candy.

We don’t bother with the little Snickers bars, either. If you come to our house, you’re getting the full-sized candy. We traditionally buy too much. We figure there might be more kids than last year, and there never are, so we wind up with a pretty decent supply of goodies.

I will say this: I won’t trick anyone. I might treat someone. I’m not smelling any feet, though.

Baltimore native Joe Weaver is a husband, father, pawnbroker and gun collector. From his home in New Bern, he writes on the lighter side of family life.

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Joe Weaver

Contributing Columnist