Where are all the kids?

S and I had fun passing out candy last night for Halloween. We ordered pizza and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas and then Pushing Daisies. It was a little on the cool side (somewhere in the 50s I would imagine) but we did end up having a little rain, so there weren't as many kids out as last year.

As a matter of fact, there seem to be fewer and fewer kids out every year. It's a shame, really. I know that there have to be more kids around her neighborhood. It just seems that kids today either have too overly protective parents, or they just don't care as much about the fun of getting out of their house for some good old-fashioned trick-or-treating. We had a couple of groups of little kids whose parents were obviously in the spirit of the holiday. We had a couple groups of teenagers who at least made the effort to put on a costume, and I gladly hand out candy to them. At least they are trying to have fun with the holiday. I think a lot of kids are taken to the mall, or organized functions with churches and schools, which isn't a bad thing, but Halloween is one of those holidays that has to be truly experienced. Rushing home from school to get your costume on, running through the neighborhood with your friends, getting the wits scared out of you at nothing but your own imagination running away with you, getting to see all the decorated homes, counting candy when you get home. S had a good point, that as our society becomes more and more unsocial due to either email, video games, TVs, whatever, kids are loosing out on the experiences that we all grew up on. It does seem a shame, really. The parents that are so scared of something happening to their children seem to forget the fact that they themselves survived their own childhood, and their children need to live the same experiences as well.