Halloween with Pictures and a Physics Lesson at the End

HALLOWEEN.
I don't even know where to start.  What is the point of this crazy holiday?  Where did it come from? We get all obsessed with the macabre and decorate our houses with dead bodies and dress up like people (if we're pets) or animals (if we're people), like grown-ups (if we're children) or prostitutes and corpses (if we're grown-up) and go around getting high on pounds of sugar with as much artificial-coloring as POSSIBLE, and tell our kids that, oh-all-right-you-can-take-candy-from-strangers-after-all. Or, alternatively, you can throw eggs at their houses.  Just this once.
What the?  Can you imagine moving here from a sane nation and trying to understand what the heck goes on?  Why people are carving faces into large vegetables and erecting styrofoam tombstones in their yards?  This is to symbolize....that we like to play dress up? ...that vegetables have feelings too? ...that we really like gross stuff and CSI is not a big enough outlet for our gruesome obsessions? Or that we just really, really, really want people to give us candy?  Maybe it was created secretly by the dental lobby.  I have no idea.  But we are good, patriotic Americans, people.  So we dress up and we eat pixie-stix and we monster mash whether we get it or not! Especially, now. 
Though this is technically our third Halloween as parents, it's really the first Little One was old enough to participate in. And my goodness.  We Halloweened ourselves OUT.
First of all, I had truly NO idea how much candy comes in when you have a kid this time of year.  It pours in.  It flows like Hersheys left in the car cup-holder.  It floods the basement.  It's amazing.
With all the "fall fun" events we attended, Little One trick-or-treated 3 times before it was even Halloween.  This helped Her to perfect Her technique, so that for the real deal She wobbled up to the front door by Herself, said "tick-o-treat", smiled, said "thank you" and did a happy candy dance (and apparently got extra helpings for cuteness) coming home with a huge haul. 
There were also parties, festivals, street fairs....I tell you.  The costume She picked out got plenty of use.  And plenty of candy.  The best thing about the cow costume, I think - besides the irony of watching Her drink SOY milk in it because of course if She were really a cow She would be allergic to Herself- was that J had a matching one! And needed practically no convincing to make it a father-daughter herd of candy-nabbing cuteness.  I got to take Her to the birthday/Halloween party that day, so J got to take Her for "real" trick-or-treating later while I manned the door.

Every year, we have run out of candy and had to do an emergency run to the store.  There are that many kids around here.  So this year, I double-stocked up.  Aaaannnnd so did J.  I guess we should have coordinated that.  Because not only did we replace almost as much candy as we gave out (due to the happy-cow dance) but we have lots leftover.  Which means that soon, I will have slowly Snicker-ed myself into a cow-like appearance as well.  COME TO MY HOUSE. EAT CANDY.   Please.
The scariest thing I saw this Halloween?  The number of parents who came to my door holding out their purses for a "treat" also.  This is always annoying to me.  But what made it scary is that it was actually legit, because at 14/15 years old,  the parents were still children themselves.  Oh my.
Little One loved all the events in which She got to be a "t-ow", and clearly got into trick-or-treat.  But She had at least as much fun handing out candy to the late teenager crowd when She got back home.
"One, you. One, you. This one? You. Happy Ween welcome!"   This was one of my favorite parts, too.  Because out of each teen too cool to be wearing a costume at all, or wearing something totally gory/horrible/verging on nudity/inappropriate/all of the above, even the ones who sauntered up to the door all swaggery, even the least likely-looking to do it said, "Aaaaw!! She's so cute!" and "oh hi little cutie! Are you a cow? OMG! The cutest cow!" and "Thank you! Widdle baby cowie (insert funny face)." 
This was the epitome of one of my favorite things, by far, about having a child. It's that little children have this energy that bends space-time around them, altering the view of the universe like a subtle shift in the curvature of a camera lens.  So that everything comes into a softer focus and you can see people's Good Side.  Even teenagers! Even under costumes and make-up and masks.  Both real and metaphoric.
I still don't get the "real" origin and meaning of Halloween.  But watching Little One work the crowd of dominatrix devils and axe-murdered zombies made me think that maybe one of the points of this oddball holiday is just to simply remind us that underneath it all, monsters are just the awkward kid with acne in the back of history class.  That whatever we pretend to be, or seem to be....we're really all...just people.   And we pretty much all like chocolate.