Halloween is no costume ball for parents

10-22-2008 National:

What was I thinking? I’ve spent the past week trying to track down a Dora the Explorer Halloween costume for my daughter, but it turns out I should have been surfing the Internet to map out my potentially villainous neighbors.

CriminalSearches.com is a new, free Web site that provides suspicious parents with detailed information on their neighborhood’s very own Michael Myers.

Kind of makes you long for simpler times, when searching for razor blades in Snickers bars was the post-trick-or-treat activity for parents.

To be honest, CriminalSearches.com doesn’t tell much, only where level-three sex offenders live and work. No drug dealers, no thieves, no one sporting a mullet (a crime against good taste). And of course, parents can always track their tykes with cell phones equipped with Global Positioning Systems.

Yet both electronic devices are two more signs of the death of Halloween. Sure, we put on a good show - the pretty pumpkins, the spooky spider webs - but come on: Halloween flies in the face of all this paranoid, terror-level nation now holds dear.

First, we mock the No. 1 rule of growing up - never take candy from strangers - and encourage our kids to knock on potential psychotics’ doors and ask for food.

And supposedly wise adults leave the lights on and the deadbolts unlocked so mobs of strangers dressed in menacing gear can extort Milk Duds, Mounds and Laffy Taffy that they’ll end up dumping on their Hannah Montana bedspreads and then devour in search of a quick corn-syrup-and-fructose high.

My sister, who knows scary - she lived in New York City for 10 years - was under the impression she liked Halloween. Finally she got her head out of the candy corn bowl and came to her senses.

“You’ve got a point,” she said. “Halloween’s fine until about 7, but then inevitably someone rings your doorbell after 8, and you’re like, ‘Oh no, they’ll wake the kids, should I answer? Should I ignore it? Will my house get egged? I end up all paranoid and curled up on the couch like Jodie Foster in ‘Panic Room.” ”

Good times.

Of course, Halloween will go on, because it’s parents who end up winning. Like a seasoned CEO, I send out my pint-sized middle management to prey on the frightened masses. She brings back the goods, which I examine under the guise of safety while scoring more sugar than Charlie at the Chocolate Factory.

Which kind of makes me the criminal. I just hope my neighbors don’t find out. ..News Source.. by Lauren Beckham Falcone