Trickle Treat

I was reading with Emilia recently when we came across the phrase ‘trick or treating’ in her book.

“What’s that?” she asked

“What do you mean?” I asked, incredulous, “you know that, we’ve done it loads of times on Halloween.” I know it is only once a year, but you’d think now she’s eight, she’d remember at least four of the times.

“Oh!” she said, “I thought that was Trickle Treating.”

“Trickle Treating? That doesn’t make any sense though. It is called Trick or Treating as if people don’t treat you, you play a trick on them. Didn’t you know that?”

Talking it through, I realised that this has just never come up. No-one has not given them goodies on Halloween, in fact we only knock on the doors of those neighbours who are likely to do so.

Actually, until this year, we did ring the bell of a neighbour who apologetically answered his door empty handed. The children were away to the next door before he’d even finished his sentence. (Despite, Emilia being aware now that we were entitled to play a trick on him.) The need for sugar far outweighed the desire to toilet paper his house in retribution. It simply did not occur to them. Besides they’d already had enough fun with toilet paper in the ‘wrap up the mummy’ game at our street Halloween party.

 

Emilia’s belief that this was ‘trickle’ treat, did get me wondering about all the other stuff we have never explained, that we assume the children understand, just because it is obvious to us.

I found another example this week in the form of Patrick’s Christmas list.

This included:

mntl helicoct

mntl car

mntl baot

Emilia had taken the list and in her pink pen, corrected the spelling so I could understand it.

She had corrected it to ‘mocontrol’ (helicopter, car, boat.)

It took me a second, mocontrol? Of course ‘remote controlled.’

Another one I have never explained.

I do love their funny little misunderstandings. I had read nearly the whole series of the Naughtiest Girl in the school to Emilia before she admitted “I don’t know why they call her, the Bold Bad Girl, Mummy, because she has hair in the picture on the front cover.”

It did take me a minute or two to work out what she meant.

“No, not bald, bad girl, bold, - you know, meaning she is cocky, confident, headstrong, brave, cheeky.”

What had the poor girl been imagining all that time?

My sister grew up having a lovely image in her head of life being a ‘butter dream.’ This was from ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’ She never really got what a butter dream was, but went along with it anyway.

Anyway, back to Halloween. Our Halloween party was great fun, with all the children dressed up in weird and wonderful costumes, and some of the adults too. Mark came as some weird, creepy bearded photographer, with a clawed hand which would randomly and violently appear from his stomach to shock you at the least provocation.

We had some scary boxes for the children to put their hands into, full of;

Eyeballs and worms (peeled grapes and spaghetti)

Witches fingers (gnarly green pickles with a nut stuck in the top for a fingernail)

Guts (the slimy innards of a pumpkin) from which you had to retrieve a ping pong ball eyeball on which was written whether you got a Trick or Treat.

We did have crying at our party. I discovered there is nothing quite so dispiriting as seeing the little face of a child crumple and boo at the sight of my scary make up. At least, I hope it was the make up.