The short end of the Pixie Stick.

Youngest gets shafted in many ways. When Eldest was 10, Middlest was 7 and Youngest was 4. Halloween was an affair, with elaborate costumes and a family trip back to TBC, our old neighborhood, for Trick or Treat. Then, out to dinner, to try to balance the candy overload stuffed in mouths over the past two hours. At that age, Youngest was still filled with the wonder of "I walk up to people's houses, and they give me candy??!!" He would race ahead, not a bit timid, and up the stairs to the next front door, shouting "Thank You!" Shoving the candy into his bag and racing to the next house, as if since this was too good to last he'd best make the most of it. The next night we'd have a whole evening of carving Jack-O-Lanterns and then arranging them to their best advantage in the darkness. Strings of candy-corn shaped lights on the mantels, bats cut from paper hanging from the chandeliers (I don't think I can claim decoration points for the real bats hanging about from the dining room curtains our first Halloween at Cowfeathers.) Halloween was the start of the season of stews, and mittens and visible breathing. (That is in the house. Outside it's even colder.)
Halloween is still the start of that season, only, Youngest leaves for school in seven minutes, and is busily trying to scavenge up a costume for the Halloween party. Today. Which reminded me that Halloween is indeed upon us, despite the lack of festive decoration and the absence of a basket full of tempting little individually wrapped candies calling to me from their prepared place "Cate! You looooove Kit Kat bars! Just one, or 12 won't hurt!" Well, it will. And there is no sense in entering the battle against pilfering the Milk Duds when there won't be a trick-or-treating child around for miles to come a knockin' on the door. The bags of candy can stay at Wal-Mart. I do have some lonely candy corns sticking to the edges of the candy jar in the front room. Safe from me. Ick. In any case, there may be a boy in the house, still only age 10, who may want to try racing from house to house in a neighborhood somewhere testing the "I knock, they give me candy!" theory.
 Digging through the recycling bin to find the newspaper yields the information that we've missed one local trick-or-treat night, and the others are on the same night as Marching Band State Finals for Eldest. Will he get shafted on this too?
My hope is that even if he does, his memories of Halloween will still be good ones. I, too, am Youngest. In the kindergarten-3rd grade years of Halloween, we lived in a suburban neighborhood in New Jersey. Halloween was big doin's there. Yet, as Youngest, I believe all 4 Halloweens I was "Little Red Riding Hood". Because, we had a pretty red cape with red fur around the hood, and a basket. I vaguely remember some of the more elaborate costuming that took place for my eldest sister, including a turn when she was maybe in 1st grade? as a "Witch's Hat". Just the hat. To scale and towering above, belling out below, it was built with engineering precision, and very cool. To wit, I should probably look back on my years as "Red" with relief, because I didn't escape the costuming plans of my mother every year. In this same suburban New Jersey town, there was a Halloween Parade. I clearly remember the year my Mom- Dad might have had a hand in this too, decided to march the kids in the parade dressed as scarecrows. For several nights we cut brown paper grocery bags into strips to  make our "straw". Each of us was then attached by our wrists to a broom handle across our shoulders and then dressed in "straw" tied at top and joints with twine or ribbon, then dressed in flannel shirts. However they got the shirts over the stretched out arms, and then our little trussed up bodies into the station wagon for the parade, I've never asked. I do remember marching, with pins and needles in my shoulders and arms that then progressed to agonizing pain, down the streets of New Jersey, stumbling my way with a sight line of two small holes in brown paper, hot, loud breathing and kept going only by the sure knowledge that to stop was to never finish the parade and be released from my broom handle. The three scarecrows either won the costume contest, or I was told we did to mitigate my tears. Red Riding hood gets to wear a pretty dress, be warm and has a basket for candy. Costume perfection- why change?

Eldest as a Pink Fairy, and Middlest as a clown, or maybe Gene Simmons? Friend Trish will recognize the clown costume, as will her kids!

Youngest's sisters had years of "I want to be a....." and I would create. "Pink Princess!" "Cinderella!" "A Fairy, a Horse Rider, Katy No Pocket, a Scary Doctor, a Clown"... Youngest had no such creations except for his first Halloween when to make toting him around all evening in a sling easier, I sewed him into a green string bean.

Huz holding my little string bean. Eldest as "Horse Rider" (note the Pony Club pin on the lapel) and Middlest as Cinderella.

So, Youngest has come up with a Cowboy costume. He has augmented his jeans and too- large hand- me- down boots with a crumpled, but very nice black felt cowboy hat (also a hand-me-down), my old c'boy belt with the enameled Hampshire Hog on the buckle, my well-worn roping gloves and fabric "chaps" his Nana made for him years ago, but are only shorter than when created. He selected a favorite plaid shirt- also too large for which he will have a bulky middle when he crams it in the top of his jeans. YEE HAW! and OH MY GRAVY! It's Halloween.
Now to figure out a way to fill up his saddle bags with candy solicitations.....