A while back our neighborhood association had a garden party. It was at someone’s house down by the creek. Really pretty house and beautiful tiered backyard garden leading down to the water. Anyway, while we were there, we met some neighbors that were younger (read: not elderly) and they invited us to their Halloween party. But we explained that on Halloween, we like to do it up with lights and bubbles and fog machines and hand out candy. They looked at us kind of like, “So…?” since that usually wraps up around 9pm and I guess people party later than that these days.

Last night we had a banger crop of trick-or-treaters. We’re estimating around 300 kids. That’s based on the 250 glow sticks we handed out roughly one per child, and then kept going until all of our 18lbs+ of candy was gone. We only had to tell two kids, “Sorry we ran out,” so I think we estimated it pretty well this year. We cleaned up all of the decorations, came inside, and debated whether to go to bed or do something else.

I said what about those guys we met at the garden party. They told us to swing by their house for a party tonight. Daniel was skeptical, but we’d had enough to drink while handing out candy that I convinced him to just do a walk-by. I said if it looks like a party is going on, or if someone is sitting out front smoking or something, we’ll talk to them and invite ourselves in.

We get to the house, and music is banging. Cars are lining the street. Daniel says he’s chickening out and tries to run away. But I said no way, there is obviously a rager going on, the side gate is open, let’s go in. And we did! Omg, there were probably 200 people, every single one decked out in the most clever and time consuming costume ever conceived. There was a really good DJ spinning and mixing and a huge bar area. We stuck out a little bit for our lack of costumes, but luckily the hosts saw us and came and welcomed us so we felt less like interlopers. By the end of the night we decided our costumes were “the neighbors” and kept yelling to turn the god damn music down.

Needless to say we stayed and drank even more beer and danced and had a blast. I was thinking to myself, what year is it? How old am I? Who does this? I hadn’t done anything that spontaneous on Halloween since College Station.

But next year, we’re going to think of some really relevant, or delightfully retro couples costume and go prepared. The house only had one bathroom, and after fighting the line a couple of times, the next time we had to pee, there were about 25 people waiting. So I said let’s just ghost, go home, pee, and go to bed. It as already like 1am by that point and I knew today would suck as it was (and I was right). Punishment notwithstanding, we had a really excellent Halloween … *checks notes* … 2026!