My Halloween plea

Be nice. Don't try to shame or embarrass teenage trick-or-treaters.

For one thing, we have better nutrition now and that big hulking ape at your door could be eleven-years-old. 

I am deeply ashamed of the time I was at my sister's house and she was rude to some nice young men who were the only trick-or-treaters they had that year. Why would anyone do that?

I wrote last year:

...I've had older or older-looking kids come to the door. The teenagers seem kind of embarrassed and will daintily take only one. You have to encourage them....

I had a friend who trick-or-treated at sixteen because he needed the food. He was malnourished. He was arrested one night when he was thirteen while searching for food in a dumpster. He thought they would feed him in juvenile detention but it was too late. Dinner was over. He thought he'd at least get to eat in the morning, but his otherwise negligent mother rushed down before breakfast to get him out.

There used to be an old woman in town who would write an annual letter to the editor denouncing trick-or-treating as extortion. It's a common complaint along with Halloween being Satanic. When these people are rude to a teenager politely hoping for candy, I guess they think they're bravely standing up to a Satanic extortion attempt.

As it happens, my old friend later spent several years in the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. His mental health hadn't yet declined when he was in high school, but when a teenager says "trick or treat", he could really mean it.

Now that I think about it, he said he had been out throwing eggs on Halloween, so lack of food wasn't his primary problem.