It’s Halloween Week here in the O’Hara household. I lose count of how many different times the kids go trick-or-treating each year these days — it’s at least three or four outings. Last night was Haunt the Halls at the Yukon High School.
The concept is pretty simple. Inside the high school, students decorate the outside of classroom doors in typical Halloween style. Each family who attends brings and donates one bag of candy. The candy is tossed into a general pile, and kids trick or treat through the school’s halls. The event runs from 6pm-8pm.
Now just using some basic math and logic here, it stands to reason that if each family brings 1 bag of candy, then each family should leave with the equivalent of one bag of candy. We brought a bag of Smarties that contained 100 individually wrapped Smarties.
We arrived at 7pm. There were people in line ahead of us and people falling in behind us, so it’s not like we were the absolute last people to show up. After donating our bag of candy, the kids began trick-or-treating in the halls. After visiting less then 10 doors, we began hearing, “Sorry kids … all out of candy!” And unfortunately, that’s how the entire second half of our evening went. The hallways are so crowded that there is no leaving or escaping this. We were basically forced to shuffle along at a lumbering pace for ten minutes before we could leave, all along passing high school kids in chairs telling the kids time and time again, “Sorry, kids.” And that’s the students that addressed us; a couple turned to their comfort zones by standing up, facing the wall, and texting on their cell phones.
Each of our kids left with less than 10 pieces of candy. The kids will have several more opportunities to acquire candy (they’ve got school parties today, Trunk-or-Treat in Mustang tonight and then actual Trick-or-Treating the neighborhood Saturday night) but that’s not the point. Haunt the Halls was a complete waste of time this year. Next year we’ll either show up right at 6pm or just skip this event altogether. The worst part was, as we were leaving people were still showing up and not being turned away from the door. Hopefully those kids had a better time than mine did. After leaving Haunt the Halls we ended up taking the kids to McDonald’s and buying them ice cream cones since they were so disappointed.
The only enjoyable or at least funny thing about Haunt the Halls was seeing high school students dressed up as rock stars with mullets and girls from Flashdance. You know you’re officially old when high school students are dressing up as what you used to wear to high school for their Halloween costumes.
Rob,
So glad we didn’t go. River really wanted to and almost talked her Uncle Matt into taking her. I decided that trick or treating leaves her enough candy to make me have fears of childhood diabetes. Thanks for the info. on the blog. You should forward it to the YHS person in charge of it. They may not be aware of the suck level.
That really sucks. Carmen is right: you should file a complaint about this. Weren’t there any teachers (or other staff member) from the school present to make sure everything went well? Meh to them.
I have a theory here. The problem is the ‘one bag of candy donation per family’ rule. If families have more than one kid, they’re not donating enough to balance out what they take. Just a thought…