Poor People Suck, Part III...

...the Halloween Edition.

I usually hate Halloween. As a kid, I guess I found it pretty cool -- free candy! -- but as the years passed and I got older, I found the whole idea of dressing up in costumes, partying until I puked, and putting on an extra 15 pounds of Butterfinger fat something not worth the time and effort.

And then there's all the stupid little chores that go with celebrating Halloween -- carving Jack-o-Lanterns, putting up macabre decorations, and the subsequent cleanup after both -- that make this holiday a royal pain in the posterior. I feel the same way about Christmas, on a certain level; I hate putting up Christmas trees, and decorating them, and getting up on ladders to staple strings of lights to the house. I cannot stand life-sized plastic Santas (with reindeer) that light up and have this creepy, Made-in-China sound box that makes Santa's Ho-Ho-Ho! sound like your grandfather suddenly remembering he has a hernia.

Although I must say, I DO enjoy dressing up as Santa for the little kids in my family, and for my cousin's friends, which I have done for many years. Go figure.

Anyways, we're talking about Halloween and the Scum of the Earth...errrm...Poor people.

Imagine my surprise when earlier this week I had decided that, dammit!, this year I was actually going to do something Halloween-ish. I was going to actually buy candy, and hand it out to all the kids in the neighborhood when they came to my front door. Normally, I don't do this at all. In previous years, any child who came a'knockin' on my door at Halloween was bound to leave disappointed. Since I'm not a "Halloween Person", so to speak, the idea of constantly responding to a doorbell every five minutes and then pretending to actually enjoy the process was more than I could normally muster.

It's not that I'm a curmudgeon...oh, wait...I am a curmudgeon. Rather, I should say that I found the whole thing rather pointless. I had forgotten what it was like to be a kid on Halloween, when visions of Baby Ruth's and Blow Pops, Tootsie Rolls and Twizzlers and Sweet Tarts and Laffy Taffy are all you can think about.

You see, I really do love children. Especially little ones, because when they get excited about something their enthusiasm is infectious. It doesn't matter how angry, depressed, pissed off, sullen, disappointed you are, if you find yourself in the company of any child between the ages of 2 and 6 all worked up into a lather of nervous excitement bordering on maniacal joy, it's hard not to get all swept up in it.

So, I decided that this year, I was actually going to become a participant in this tradition that I had so casually tossed aside so long ago. Maybe, I thought, I could even have some fun.

And then the Trick or Treaters came...

Now, I have to make a distinction here. When I say "the Trick or Treaters" I should make clear that I really am referring to a specific CLASS of Trick or Treaters. I'll explain.

Not one block away from Lunatic Central is a New York City housing project. The Todt Hill Houses. At one time, it was designated as public housing for the elderly, but this changed some time ago, I forget how many years it's been. Once the former elderly tenants who occupied the place finally died off, a new wave of public housing sponges took up residence. This particular class consists largely of racial minorities and the welfare-sucking parasites (ooh, sorry, that was redundant) that seem to multiply like bedbugs every time someone yells out the words "FREE!" or "SUBSIDIZED!".

Anyways, I expected to see lots of kids from the projects. That's not the issue. It's their goddamned parents...or rather, I should say, their goddamned gamete donors, because "parent" is too generous a word for some of them.

So, here I was; I had filled the largest salad bowl in the house with candy, and had plenty of spare ammo right behind the door (in fact, I refilled that sucker 6 times). When the children came to the door, I told them they could take whatever they wanted (the variety was great, for I had planned ahead: Snickers, Three Musketeers, Peanut Butter Cups, Kit Kats, Dum-Dums, M&M's, Lemonheads, Mike & Ike's), and as much as they wanted. Or, at least as much as Mommy and/or Daddy would allow.

The...shall we say...non-minority...parents upon hearing the words "You take whatever you want, Sweetheart/Buddy. You can have everything you want", would invariably tell their children to limit their swag to one or two pieces; to give thought to the other kids who would be coming later who might be disappointed if supplies ran low; and not to be ungrateful and ill-mannered by actually taking me up on my offer.

Not so the minority parents.

For at the words "You can take what you want; don't be shy" the grabbing began with both hands. And it wasn't just the children. The parents would be grabbing with both hands, too. And because these folks showed up in large groups of 10-15 individuals, and because they were all concerned to make sure they got candy for their grandmothers/cousins/uncles/baby daddies, etc -- or in other words, the ones too fucking lazy or strung out to get up off their fat, minority asses to get free candy -- as soon as the words were uttered, it was like feeding time at the shark tank at the Coney Island Aquarium.

Especially the teenagers. For there were many of them, most between the ages, I guess, of 13 and 16, still trick or treating (more likely, they're collecting candy for later resale, just like with food stamps. Hey, you have to get the money for Drank someplace, right?) racing the smaller kids from house to house in an effort to collect all of the bounty before the little ones got there.If they weren't actually casing your house. I had to chase two out of my back yard. Brazen little bastards went back there right in front of me, too.

At some point, I totally lost it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you people?", I asked. "I'm doing this for the children, not you! If you want candy, go buy some. You're goddamned adults!". Afterwards, I made it plain that I was only giving candy to children: no adults, no teenagers, and I don't care if your Auntie asked you to bring her home something, because she's probably only going to steal your candy, anyway, Child.

The words "Thank you" were a rarity (although to be fair, a few of these children actually did say it without being prompted by their parents). In fact, when dealing with this particular portion of the Trick or Treating community, any sense of friendship or even warm fuzzy feeling, was absent. It was a pro forma exercise; it's Halloween, you're supposed to give us candy.  Dammit. There often wasn't even a "Tick or Treat!".

I guess four or five generations of having shit handed to you by the government probably puts you into that sort of state, and gives you that kind of chutzpah. I mean, think about it this way: this country hands out food stamps, subsidized housing, free medical care, taxpayer-funded schools, midnight basketball, Affirmative Action, preferential treatment in hiring and college admissions, cash allotments, tax credits and refunds for being a non-taxpayer. In recent years, we've been boondoggled into providing Obama phones, ObamaCare (well, if they could get the webpage to work, that is), Cash-for-Clunkers, Mortgage renegotiation schemes, and a goddamned (half-) Black President. I would think by now reparations had well-and-truly been paid. But at the end of it all, a crowd of greedy, entitled assholes shows up on your doorstep grabbing candy with both fists, jostling their own children off the front steps in the process.

Even the ones with strollers...

And you know they would have sued my Lilly White Ass if someone had gotten hurt, too.

I guess I shouldn't have expected any different. After all, I live in this neighborhood and I see what some of the people are up to, and how they live and behave. And I don't want to give the impression that it's only Blacks who behave this way, for the Latinos do it too, only in a different language that they think you don't understand -- as the woman who made a disparaging remark (to the crowd she came with: hey, this stupid Gringo said take what you want! Take everything; these people are rich!) soon found out wasn't the case. She at least had the decency to act embarrassed.

...and now Halloween is ruined again.