How old is too old to Trick or Treat? Or too young for that matter?
Whenever I think about this question, I always recall an episode of The Cleveland Show. In “It’s the Great Pancake Junior Brown” Cleveland tells fourteen year-old Cleveland Junior that he is too old to Trick or Treat (unlike his five year old brother Rallo).
Confusion ensues that evening when his fifteen year old sister Roberta and both parents put on Halloween costumes and get ready to go out to parties.
Cleveland, Jr.: “But Pops, you said I was too old to dress up.”
Cleveland: “You are. And you’re too young.”
Cleveland, Jr.: “Whhhaaattt?”
Cleveland: “See, you’re at that awkward age where dressing up is lame.”
At my house, we’ve gone back and forth on this question with my son. The first time I took him out for Trick or Treat, he was six months old. Why, you ask? Because, darn it, he looked so cute in the superman costume and he enjoyed us knocking on doors and smiling at all the neighbors, and I enjoyed showing him off to the neighbors. They didn’t mind either.
Ten years later, he decided he was too old, because dressing up wasn’t cool. But that didn’t stop him from escorting his little sister all around the neighborhood because “the decorations scare her”. In his mind that didn’t count as actually Trick-or-Treating.
Imagine my surprise, when he (now thirteen) suddenly asked me if maybe he should get a costume and go out. Wondering what had changed his mind about the whole thing, I asked him who he was thinking about going with.
A teenage girl, of course, as it turns out. That would be the one thing that would change his mind about whether or not it was cool. You see, girls never have to ask themselves whether or not they are too old to Trick or Treat. They just switch from cute costumes to vampy costumes at some point.
Hmmm, speaking of vampy costumes, maybe I had better tell him that dressing up is lame…
