OK, the following is the Halloween Commentary.
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Let me preface this with: Our kids had a great time on Halloween! They are still really little. Everett knows how it is supposed to go, and Lawrence is just catching on, but neither one has any idea of the sheer volume of candy they could potentially be getting, or how many houses are a reasonable number. So all my comments are only from the adult perspective - it was a great night from the little kid perspective.
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HELLO, SAUDIS. HELLO?? Apparently, the lights are on, but no one is home. Literally.
GUYS. COME ON. IT TAKES **TWO** INTERESTED PARTIES TO TRICK OR TREAT. We'll call the first party the "Trick or Treaters" and the second party the "Trick or Treatees." Usually what happens is that some larger portion of the community agrees to be the Trick or Treatees, and some smaller portion agrees to be the Trick or Treaters. The Trick or Treaters then walk through the neighborhoods and ring the doorbells of the Trick or Treatees, and the Trick or Treatees open the door and provide candy. IT DOESN'T WORK IF EVERYBODY DECIDES TO BE A TRICK OR TREATER! SOMEBODY HAS GOT TO STAY HOME!
It hasn't always been this way. When the company compounds were mostly western expats, like back when Mike was growing up here, Halloween was a fantastic free-for-all. He describes a scene in which every single house was open for business on Halloween, so much so that the parents usually sat outside on the driveways in lawn chairs to give out the candy, so you didn't even have to go up to the door. Keep in mind that there are *thousands* of homes on the compound and most of them share walls, so the driveways are maybe 15 or 20 feet apart each. Mike and his friends would fly around the camp on rollerblades and fill pillowcases with candy until they were practically too heavy to carry. Wow! He still clearly relishes the memory of those Halloweens - especially since westerners were not allowed to celebrate any other holidays...no Christmas or Easter, for example. Halloween was the one holiday that the Company got right.
This was before September 11 and all the expats left.
We were not expecting it to be that plentiful. These days, the nationality dynamic is flipped from what it was - 90% Saudi and 10% western, instead of the other way around. But Saudis have nothing against Halloween - it's not a religious holiday after all. (OK, you particularly picky people - yes I know it stems from an old religious holiday, but let's be realistic and face the fact that although it used to be religious, it's not anymore.)
So we knew it would be less than before, but Mike and I were both surprised at what actually went on here on the appointed evening. Here's how Halloween worked for us:
A few days before Halloween, we were given the heads up that there are certain streets that happen to have more westerners, so those are the streets to hit. Luckily, most of them are immediately around our house. (I didn't know it, but apparently we live in the most western populated part of camp.)
Also, it's hard to tell who is willing to let you trick or treat there, because you have to go through the (closed) front gate and around a corner to see the front door. We were told that anyone who is accepting trick or treaters has lights on or around their garage, and they stand outside on the driveway to give out the candy. (This really bothered Everett because he was all revved up to ring doorbells like last year.)
So we started out with a bang and got three houses on the street next to ours. Keep in mind that I can see probably at least 20 houses from our driveway - so this already seemed sparse. But we had been assured that our neighborhood was THE hoppin' place, so we kept going with high hopes. We rounded the corner to the next street, and....nothing. Not one house. OK, keep going. We got about five houses on the next street and maybe about three more on the street after that. And that was it! That's it? There are more than 100 houses in our part of camp, and only, let's see, 3+5+3 = 11 of them were participating? Sheesh.
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| The first house we went to. You can tell if they are trick or treatees by the lights and decorations. |
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| People who are participating really go all-out. |
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| Everett was really intimidated, but not my Lawrence! He said, "I'm Captain Hook!" |
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| Everett got better at the second house. |
We decided to power on and walk to Mike's childhood friend's parents' house, which is in a different but adjacent neighborhood. Guess how many houses we hit on the way....ZERO! Not one. So we got to their house and hung out for a while, and then Lawrence and Catherine were tired, so I took Everett on. There were several other streets I wanted to try before I gave up, especially since Everett is so much more aware of what's going on. And he was still so excited! We walked down one street, then another, then another. We passed two streets that I had been told would be "good" streets, but NOT ONE was open for business. By this time, we have walked a long way and I am carrying Peter Pan on my shoulders.
Then we got to the school. Oh. My. Gosh. We found everybody. Security had blocked off the streets and it was FULL of Saudis in costume. FULL! It was like Boomsday. (I know all you non-Knoxvillians have no idea what I am talking about, but every Labor Day, the Knoxville has this enormous fireworks show downtown called Boomsday. I forget how many people typically attend, but I want to say it's like 500,000 people, and when they all walk on Neyland Drive together, it's this huge crush of rednecks. While you're maneuvering in the crowd and trying not to get squished or run over, you think, "Where did all these people materialize from?!".) The street was MOBBED. But here's the funny thing....they were all walking, but no one was coming out or going into the crowd....and...the crowd had a self-imposed imaginary boundary. It was the weirdest thing. We were walking THROUGH, looking for houses to trick or treat at, and we were the only ones. And (of course) we were the only white people to be seen. Maybe they thought that was part of our costumes.
Well, naturally, we found ZERO houses to trick or treat at through there (even though we had been assured otherwise, since these were the best bet streets). I finally discovered the reason when we saw a house with orange lights. It had DOZENS of Saudis standing outside the door, ringing the doorbell incessantly. There was a big line out into the road. It was obvious to me that these poor people had actually tried to give out candy, had clearly run out at some point because of the masses, and did not want to battle the crowds to come outside and turn off their lights. But the Saudi kids kept right on ringing that doorbell. Yeah, if they did that to me, I'd probably stop giving out candy every year, too.
Here's the deal, folks. You have to give to get. If you just take take take, then no one will do it anymore. If your kids trick or treat, you should stay home and give out candy! Saudis like the taking part, but not the giving part. They came in and took too much, and, in Mike's words, they "ruined Halloween." People who have lived here know this, and so they don't participate anymore. It all falls apart unless you DO YOUR PART to contribute. This is a good example of what we have taken to calling "typical Saudi." No work ethic, no team playing, no striving for something better, no contributing. How sad.
Everett and I kept going and decided to hit a couple of houses of people we knew who were likely to be home. The rest of the story is that we walked more than a mile through thousands of homes, and only found three more to trick or treat at. THREE! Everett was a real trooper, and he thought that trick or treating was great. Sigh. Well, at least we had a lot of one-on-one Mommy and Everett time.
So Halloween here has changed a lot since Mike's day. It was fun, and we certainly don't need any more candy than we got, and at least we'll have a more realistic idea of what to expect next year.
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| Enjoying the spoils of war. |
