French Press

For a whole year,
I made them coffee:
patients, doctors, and nurses

Back home,
mama had always used a French press.
I thought I knew
how to use a 'normal' coffee machine

So, for a whole year,
an entire year,
I made everyone coffee:
regular and decaf
cream and sugar

before a patient finally
tasted it,
spat it out,
gagged--
I mean eyes-bulging gagged--

and handed it back.

"This is horrible stuff!"

I went back,

tasted it myself--

the coffee I'd been making for a whole year.

Ohmygoshitwasawful

Something like really watery surströmming

Then I realized:

you can't reuse the grinds.

© 2016   Abby Danfora

Adding Insult to Injury

If you add insult to injury,

you can factor out an (in) first.

That gives in(sult+jury)

Where "Sult" is defined as 

'a village in the Gramsh municipality of Albania'

and "jury" is defined as

'a body of people who swear to give a verdict in court based on presented evidence.'

Substituting, we get:

In(a body of people who swear to give a verdict in court based on evidence + a village in the Gramsh municipality of Albania)

(remember, order of addition doesn't matter)

Expanding, we get our final answer:

In a body of people who swear to give a verdict in court based on evidence in a village in the Gramsh municipality of Albania

This is how you add insult to injury.

Café Olé

Café Olé

I fought a cup of coffee the other day.
It was the biggest fight of the century,
and it made me one of the boldest Matadores de Café
of all time.

I used the same red Christmas napkin I always use,
leftover from that time Aunt Jennifer came over
when I was three
and I'd shoved it up my nose
along with a pea and a popsicle stick
just to see if it would all fit.

My mom never approved
of my having café fights in the living room
--she had a nice white rug--
but café fights energized me like none other,
and I just couldn't give them up.

This fight though,
it was different than any of my other café fights.
I fought a bold café bravo.

Long story short,
it was hot-tempered and full of bitter resentment
after the barista left it in a tank for seven hours
and it had all but turned into an alcoholic beverage.

It took fifteen minutes,
but I finally won
and shouted café olé !
as I finished the café off
and flourished my red napkin,

The other people in the coffee shop just stared.

They must have boring lives.

© 2016   Abby Danfora

KFC

Sorry I haven't posted in a while!  As always, if you like, please click the blue subscribe button!  Thanks for reading!

I sit on the beach

eating crispy KFC

and a seagull, a winged rat,

flies over and

looks menacingly at me

like something out of

Hitchcock's The Birds.

Why are you

looking menacingly

at me, winged sea rat?

If I give you food,

you'll return it to me

on my head,

puréed, like some

gross thing people drink

on juicing diets.

© 2015   Abby Danfora

Tetris

The other day,
the sun hit my face
at eight a.m.
and I got up,
made toast,
ate it,
and left
for work.

In the car,
I listened to Elvis--
my fav--
and swerved
to avoid
thick-skulled
testosterone-driven
young men
with broken turn signals.

Work went well--
I drank my coffee,
black,
no cream or sugar,
black,
wrote some headlines:
"Heroic Woman saves Dog locked in Hot Car"
"Recession Looms over Wall Street"
"Why we should Save the Penguins."

Sally gossiped as usual,
Bob got angry about everything,
and June finally got fired.
Finally.

I had lunch,
salade niçoise,
edited some work,
played Tetris for thirty minutes,
played Tetris for another thirty minutes,
headed home in my white Toyota.

I got home,
took a shower,
had a nice date with my cat and Netflix,
and crawled into bed in fuzzy warm socks
and Christmas striped pajamas.

Then I woke up.
Blaring lights,
bleachy smell,
sick people smell,
old people smell,
a sudden white flutter,
shortcoat,
tall handsome guy,
smell of Axe.

People all around me,
wide smiles,
crying,
mom,
dad,
you,
and then:

"Welcome back, you've been in a coma for a week.
We missed you.
Car accident while you were driving back from your job at the meat factory."


© 2015   Abby Danfora

On dirait le Sud....

Le Sud:

de la lavande,
la mer,
(juste comme cela de Charles Trenet)
des calissons,
une très belle chanson, «Le Sud» de Nino Ferrer,
un moto dans les montagnes,
du vin et des raisins,
des abricots fraîches qui font les doigts collant,
les roudoudou et une autre chanson, «Mistral Gagnant,» Renaud:

«Et les vrais roudoudous qui nous coupaient les lèvres
Et nous niquaient les dents
Et les mistrals gagnants»

les piscines,
les cigales,
les promenades sur la plage,
des palmiers avec du Perrier et un livre...

Ça c'est le Sud...
J'espère que vous l'aimez aussi !

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine
floating through impressionist water lilies.


The blended blue and green strokes are slowly being caked
in gooey psychedelic yellow and pink ooze,


before Lucy starts to dance a waltz on their petals.
The yellow and green cellophane water lily flowers


sway, rippling the water with bright, crystal lines of white.
Our yellow submarine drifts under a bridge


past tall rockinghorse people.
I wave and politely refuse their offerings of marshmallow pies.


They look too similar to Alice B. Toklas' brownies.


Instead, I walk over to Monet and ask if he's thought about
painting Rouen Cathedral lately.


I love water lilies, but cathedrals have always been more my thing.
He says he painted those yesterday.


He shows me one, and as I stare in awe,
I say that, in the future, where I'm from,
his paintings are definitely here to stay.


I've never seen anything like them in all my life.
I know I'll never lose affection for impressionism.


Then, Monet is sucked up into a whirlpool of
solid-colored cubes and squares and signed urinals.


I wave goodbye as the yellow submarine floats me
towards a wall of paint splotches and lines.


A smoking pipe sticks out of the ground,
but somehow I know that it's not really a pipe.
Maybe that's because it's in a sea of melting clocks.


There's a little boy frozen in black-and-white space holding a hand grenade
on a flat, solid wall of green grass.


I wave, and his face contorts in anger.
Marilyn smiles as I pass the Cambell's soup factory.


Honestly, her lipstick and eyeliner scare me.
I miss Monet and his umbrella lady.


The marmalade skies morph in front of my eyes--
they're no longer a rich orange color,


but instead they're white, and the word SKY
is simply written across them in 48pt. Times New Roman font.


One of my fellow submarine passengers--
I hadn't noticed him before--
explains that we're supposed to use our imaginations
and to picture the sky the way we personally relate to it.


I don't quite buy it.
I really miss Monet now.


But in an instant, a lady starts to float away from our yellow submarine.
"I relate better to life from a cruise ship," she says.
And off she goes.


Then, one by one, everyone floats away.
One guy's on a dolphin,


someone else has a warship, and suddenly
the Cambell's soup factory explodes as a torpedo hits it.


Some other guy rides off on a water horse,
my best friend goes off with some Italian guy on a speed boat.


I look around--
there's only one guy left on the yellow submarine.


We shrug and smile at each other,
turning the wheel back towards our favorite impressionist water lilies.


As we drift back towards marmalade skies, I wonder
about the other forty-two lonely passengers.


Maybe they're all with multi-colored Marilyn
or stuck eating tomato soup for life.


They'll find their own ways, I guess.
After all, wasn't that why they left?

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Ideas for Sale

The other day,
I found a booth of ''Ideas for Sale''
at a flea market.

I bought a dozen for twenty bucks.
They were new, too.
I never buy second-hand ideas
because second-hand ideas always smell,
and they always have stains.

I thought it was a pretty good deal--
only twenty bucks for twelve ideas--
You know ideas these days,
they're rare, so they usually have to be expensive.

Actually, I started wondering if they were really refurbished ideas.
Maybe they're refurbished
and there's really some defect
or they don't work at all.
If it turns out
that my new ideas are broken,
I'll take them back to the idea stand and get a refund.

Either way,
I bought a dozen ideas for twenty bucks the other day.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Snow White's Cujo

"Get out," you say.
You smother me with your cold green eyes
and point to the door and my suitcase.

"Leave now."  Your voice bites.
It crouches behind your tongue
and leaps out in a wave of shouting.

Your lipstick is bright red,
the color of Snow White's apple.
For a moment, you remind me of Cujo.

You snarl.
Your wet fur rises on end.
You crouch to attack.

You inch forward.
The blood drips off your fur
and onto the kitchen floor.

"I'm leaving."
It's not as if I care to stay here.
I never liked animals much anyways.


 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Some Guy in the Park

There's some guy in the park.
The pigeons throw bread at him sometimes,
but then he poops on their feet
and they flap him away with their wings.

Sometimes, when he's really hungry,
he'll follow unsuspecting pigeons around
and shout until they give him food.
He's a real creeper.

Still, he's not nearly as bad as the lady in my kitchen.
She's been there for years.
I don't set traps anymore, though.
I've learned to leave her alone ever since she bit me.

Every evening,
I find her crawling on the dirty dishes.
Mornings, I come downstairs
and find teethmarks in the bread I use for toast.

I've been thinking,
maybe I should take her to the park
to meet the weird pigeon-chaser guy.
Maybe they'll hit it off.

At least it would get her out of my bread.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

My Bucket List

Some people make a bucket list
when they turn fifty or fifty-five.
I myself have a lot of buckets stored away
in various places,
and here is a list of them,
even though I'm only eighteen.

I have a wooden bucket--
it has worm holes,
smells like earthy rotten wood.
Grandma gave it to me years ago.
I think I used it once to carry crisp green apples back from an orchard in Charlottesville
and then left it in the backyard and forgot it was there.

I also have a rusty tin bucket.
It's rusted.  It's covered in yellow rust.
I use it to throw at the neighbor's fat hoodlum cat.
It cut my hand once and I got stitches and a jagged scar shaped like Belgium.

There's another bucket, a pail,
a baby bucket,
sitting on the windowsill,
growing some carnations--red ones,
just like the ones in the film Jean de Florette.

You haven't seen Jean de Florette?
Go watch it, and next time you see me,
we'll have something to talk about
other than how awful your week was.

My favorite bucket
is an ivory bucket.
It's not rusty or rotten, and
it's never been used, never will be--Paul brought it back from India
and I keep it on a shelf with my Italian flag and German martini glass

I also have a bucket
that's a family heirloom.
Willy Wonka would say
"it smells like old people."
I imagine it also smells like cat, though--
my cat sleeps in it all day,
except when she's eating or chasing her tail.
I guess that means my heirloom bucket smells like old cat.
Delish

I have one last bucket--
it's buried in Canterbury.
Nevermind, that's Becket.
Thomas Becket.
Stupid typo.
My real last bucket I gave to
a handsome boy who took me
on my first date,
and he sent it back empty with some break-up note crumpled in the bottom,
riddled with spelling errors.
I told myself he was too illiterate anyways.

I had polished it, filled it with chocolate,
his birthday was right after Lent ended,
and he'd gone off with some other girl
who smoked green cigarettes
and wore lipstick rouge
and drank pink ladies
and danced a perpetual two-step whenever she walked
(while I clambered around in pointe shoes,
twisting ankles and breaking toes),
he'd gone off with her--
he even gave her some of my chocolate for her birthday.

It's my bathroom waste bucket.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

To Do List

Starred items are most urgent--more *'s = more urgent

finish 3 biogenetics assignments*

make blog post**

work on optional group project for envi sci*

eradicate worldwide terrorism threat

fix guitar string***

send photo for NCSSM yearbook*

draw/paint something***

finish History dispute*

take biogenetics final exam

send NCSSM graduation invitations*

find job**

find roomate***

write thank you cards*

message dance teacher about lessons*

watch AHS and SN***

clean Subaru*

buy new bathing suit**

find cure for cancer*

search Elance

make dinner reservations*

book flight for AADP*

bake cookies for party**

sell junk*

make PayPal account*

fix earbuds**

enter My Coke Rewards codes

clean inbox***

set up cell phone*

get new pointe shoes**

clean

     cat's room*****

     front room

     office*

     halls

     bathroom

     kitchen*

     room**

fill out immunization form for AADP*

read and review books**

return awful Netflix DVD that's been on the table for months********

earn Swagbucks

fix laptop*

sell photography on stock photo site**

review French**********

check email

find/return NCSSM textbooks*

Checkout 51

do laundry**

make last will and testament*****

drive on interstate**

get organized

Made in China

© 2015 Abby Danfora photography

"What were you thinking?" she asked. "Why did you do it?  What could you possibly have been thinking?"

She towered over me in her utilitarian, mass-produced chair, which was probably made in China over a decade ago.

"What would your parents say?  Your father?  What will he do when--"

I thought about the concert I was going to with my best friend later this afternoon.  We'd get our photographs signed after the show, maybe talk to the singers, go get fat on pizza and junk after.  We'd come home at 2 a.m., sleep 'til noon the next day, go out and shoot some hoops maybe.

"Are you even listening?"

I looked up.

"I wasn't thinking," I said.  "I'm sorry."

She looked intensely at me, pursed her lips and sighed.  Her eyes met her folded hands in her lap.

After a moment, she got up and pushed her utilitarian chair back under her desk.

She waved an arm down the empty school hall.

"Stay out of trouble," she said.  "Go on, get outta here."

I turned and escaped past the dark empty classrooms and into the fresh sun.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Some Music for the Surviving of Tuesday

Hallo,

Like everything else I enjoy, my music tastes are colorful, sometimes downright strange.  Here are five of my favorite artists with a sample of music for each from le YouTube.  Along with prayers, these awesome singers have gotten me through many a Tuesday, and I hope they will do the same for you!  These are not by any means the only singers I enjoy, and they are not in any order of preference.  They are just some of my favorites who came to mind first in a random order.

I do not claim any rights to the music videos, the songs, the lyrics, or the artists.  All rights go to the original video uploaders, the singers/musicians, and song writers.  Enjoy!

Claude Barzotti (Belgian-born, Italian-raised, French-singing)
          Le Rital:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPXtKGuG9rw

Margaux Avril (French, French-singing; her birthday is two days after mine!)
         L'air de rien:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5ztosKIqp8

Helmut Lotti (Belgian, sings in just about every language)
         Очи чёрные (a traditional Russian song):    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIWQE-8t5ew

Lena Meyer-Landrut (German, won Eurovision for Germany in 2010)
         Touch a New Day:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WIEQBeIoS0

Jonatan Cerrada (Belgian, French-singing, represented France in Eurovision 2004)
         Dites-moi:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufjirSuWr6I

After making this list, I realized that three of the five artists who first came to mind are Belgian-born.  I wonder if this is entirely a coincidence or if Belgian blood and good voices go hand-in-hand?

Enjoy!

Oh, and let's not forget Elvis!  But, of course, he goes without saying, so I didn't include him in my list :).  I don't really need to provide a YouTube link for him, do I?  It was a night, oo-oo what a night it was it really was...such a night...

Exam Week + Why I Haven't had Time for a New Post

Hey guys,

So, I know I haven't posted in a while, but this does NOT mean that I'm falling back into my 1-post-per-year thing...

Now that I've realized the beauty and value of blogging, that won't be happening again!

I haven't been posting simply because this is exam week and I haven't had time to work on anything anyone would want to read.  I have had several posts in the draft stages for the past few months and am slowly working on those, but I haven't had time to actually make a new post and I won't until Friday or Saturdayish...

In the meanwhile, thank you for staying subscribed.  Spread the word about this blog's craziness, eat more chocolate, learn the Schuhplattler, and go finish studying for YOUR exams!

*Note--by posting this blog post apologizing for not posting, not only have I apologized, but I have also remedied the problem by making a short blog post.  I no longer have a lack-of-recent-postings to apologize for!

P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N spells "procrastination!"

Ciao !!

How Tennis, Love, and Bagels can get you a free Designer Straitjacket in a Foreign Country

Hallo Leute !  

Fun fact which you probably already knew:   "Hallo" isn't just German.  It's also used as a greeting in Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Norwegian, and several other languages.  If you can say "hallo," you already know your first word in over half a dozen languages!  Look at you--already multilingual and making me cry!  Not quite multilingual...but it's a start.  It's probably a safe greeting to use if you have no idea what language someone speaks.

Remember that time you woke up in a strange country where everyone was wearing Liederhosen, dancing the Schuhplattler on tables, drinking vodka, eating croissants, and singing Rigoletto with a thick Aussie accent?  If you had known this handy multicultural word, "hallo," you could have charmed them all into giving you free baklava and black forest cake (say "Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte") with your knowledge of foreign greetings.

What are some other words you should know that are found in many languages?

"Tennis," a word for a popular game played on a green court with a green ball, is also the same across several languages including Dutch, Danish, French, German, Klingon, Norwegian, and Italian.  Next time you go to another country and want to play tennis, you can express either your wishes or your insanity by running up to a random stranger, shouting "TENNIS," and wildly swinging an invisible racket in the air while singing about love and bagels...and how much you love bagels.  This might not earn you any Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte as with "hallo," but it could earn you a free straitjacket, which otherwise would cost you "$279.00 + $24.85 shipping" on Amazon.  Then you can go back to that strange Liederhosen-wearing-croissant-eating country you woke up in back in the second paragraph and join in dancing the Schuhplattler and singing Rigoletto in your new designer straitjacket!

There are many other words that are the same across several languages, but "hallo" and "tennis" are undoubtedly the two most important.  You now know how to greet people, increasing your chances of being invited to Schuhplattler-Rigoletto parties and foreign-food-eating events, and how to earn a free straitjacket by loudly professing your undying love of tennis and bagels.

Now go eat some Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte while you are pondering what kind of blog post you just read and shaking your head at my bad tennis puns!

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Emily Dickinson: Blazing in gold and quenching in purple

I'm pressed for time, so I thought I'd share someone else's poems in a completely-attributed, non-plagiarized post.  We're reading a lot of Emily Dickinson's poetry in a class, and these are probably my favorites so far:

Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,
Leaping like leopards to the sky,
Then at the feet of the old horizon
Laying her spotted face, to die;

Stooping as low as the kitchen window,
Touching the roof and tinting the barn,
Kissing her bonnet to the meadow,
— And the juggler of day is gone!

Emily Dickinson: Blazing in Gold and Quenching in Purple

©Nancy Moser Photography

The mountain sat upon the plain 

In his eternal chair, 

His observation omnifold, 

His inquest everywhere. 

The seasons prayed around his knees, 

Like children round a sire: 

Grandfather of the days is he, 

Of dawn the ancestor.

Emily Dickinson: The Mountain Sat Upon the Plain


Ciao !

True Thanks: Inconvenient, Difficult, and Rewarding for Everyone Involved

As we're all getting ready for Thanksgiving festivities later today--buying last minute ingredients for the sweet potato casserole and wondering how we're going to deal with the in-laws coming over who always have us wondering "De quelle planète descendez-vous??"--it's easy to forget about friends and family in hospital, especially if we haven't seen them in years, when we've had a falling-out, or when it's just inconvenient to visit.  

We become so easily worried about finding a suitable gift basket to bring to a host's dinner, one that's not cheap or too showy and includes almonds but no peanuts, that we forget about our Aunt Marge who's recovering in the hospital from a bariatric surgery or about our annoying coworker, Greg, who's still in intensive care after a car accident. We so easily forget that these family members and acquaintances, however distantly we know them, enjoy and crave fellowship, particularly on Thanksgiving day, as much as we do.

We think it may be "too inconvenient" to visit these family members and acquaintances in hospital, and we justify our thoughts with the assumption that someone else will probably go visit them--they wouldn't want to see us anyways.  We don't send a card because cards are too old-fashioned and somehow whatever we write in them always sounds awkward and makes us feel uncomfortable.  We don't call because we're too afraid we'll have to say "I'm sorry" for the blow-up and harsh words we exchanged two years ago over a ruined carpet.

So, instead of visiting, sending cards, or even calling, we forget about our relatives and acquaintances in hospital and instead focus on the people we have an easy time spending time with.  It's easier to spend Thanksgiving with our best friend, with a significant other, or with someone with whom we have never argued before.  It's easy to spend time with people who have always treated us well and who make good Thanksgiving foods.  If our annoying coworker Greg doesn't have any visitors for Thanksgiving, it's his own fault for being such a jerk, right?  Of course, we feel "bad" that he was in a car accident, but we would never go visit him in the hospital ourselves because our interactions with him are the cause of so many headaches.  He must have some close family members or friends--let them visit Greg instead...right?

The thanks we give during Thanksgiving should transcend this initial unwillingness to spend time and energy on people when it's not the easy or convenient thing to do.  True "thanks" is not just a noun, nor is it easy.  Giving true "thanks" means extending our gratitude to others through our words and actions.  "Giving thanks" is a verb--we must do it, not just feel it.  If we are truly thankful, our thanks will spill over into compassion and empathy for others.  It's easy to celebrate our thanks with people who do us no wrong and who live less than five minutes away, and we extend our gratitude, compassion, and empathy to them without a second thought.  It's less easy to celebrate our thanks with people who are in a hospital an hour away and who we decided never to speak to again.  This, however, is true gratitude--showing thanks for all people in our lives, no matter what walls we have constructed to block them out.

By visiting or showing care for an "inconvenient" or "difficult" hospitalized family member or acquaintance, we not only come to realize and express our own deep gratitude for all people in our lives, but we help that patient to express and realize his own gratitude.  In fact, patients who have visitors, receive a card, or receive phone calls from friends and family are usually more determined to recover quickly than patients who can interact only with hospital staff.  Patients who interact only with hospital staff and do not receive cards or calls and have no one to have a non-medical conversation with quickly become frustrated.  They often do not wish to recover because they feel they have no one to recover for.  One patient on our floor had no visitors, cards, or phone calls during a hospital stay of several months and soon lost the will to even get up to walk.

In summary, here's a Thanksgiving challenge--make an uncomfortable, inconvenient effort to do one or a combination of these things:

     a)  visit someone you know who's in a hospital--take the time and effort to extend your "Thanks"giving to a family member or acquaintance, especially if you have a hard time facing him, be it because it's inconvenient or emotionally/mentally difficult.  Maybe he is like the patient on our floor who had no visitors for months and you'll be the first to express active "Thanks"giving.

    b)  IF you do not know anyone in a hospital (this means visit anyone you know first), go to a nurses' station on a patient floor in a hospital and ask if there are any patients without visitors, cards, or phone calls whom you can visit.  Spend 30 minutes to an hour just talking with a patient, and extend your "Thanks"giving to them.

    c)   I know many people have definite Thanksgiving plans.  If this is the case, and you CANNOT (not "cannot conveniently," but are actually incapable) visit family members, acquaintances, or random lonely patients, make a phone call, send an email, or Skype chat with someone you know who's in a hospital.  Offer support, and arrange a time to physically visit that person within the next month--maybe for Christmas!

    d)   Send a card to someone you know who's in a hospital--you'd be surprised how few cards patients get.  In my entire unit, I typically see fewer than four or five people who have received a card.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Haikus For "Yous"

Hallo mes amis,
I wrote some haikus for "yous"
amuse-toi; merci:


I wrote some haikus.
You are reading them right now,
wishing I hadn't.


PC restarted
I was working on some stuff.
Now it is erased.


I'm drowning in math;
It's linear programming.
"It's simple," they say.


Your ad on YouTube
Does not make me more likely
To buy your product.


Your ad on YouTube
Does make me much more likely
to close YouTube tabs.


Sherlock wears trench coats
And so do I; so therefore...
make your deductions.


I miss France right now;
So many good foods to eat,
such beautiful light.


J'ai un espresso.
Ich liebe dich, espresso,
comme le chocolat


Why espresso "shots?"
I'd like a full cupful please...
not this tiny thing.


What is this "bae" stuff?
"Swedish defense company??"
Stop using this please!


If you give me cheese,
I will love you forever
but I won't share it.


You are wondering:
"How many more of these things
do I have to read?!?"


This is the last one.
Merci beaucoup--will write more.
Subscribe to this blog.

 © 2016   Abby Danfora

A Modern Mrs. Shimerda

Halloween gets creepier and creepier each year.

People don't say "trick-or-treat" anymore.  They don't even say "hi," let alone "thank you" when they come to your door.  They stare at you with creepy eyes and grab half of what's in the bowl, then turn and clamber back up the driveway, groaning like the undead because we gave out Snickers instead of Starbursts.  For starters, who in their right mind would prefer Starbursts to Snickers?

If I say anything like "don't you want to leave some for other people?", they'll just look up from the bowl, blink a few times, and grab another handful.  Most of "them" aren't even kids.  Many are old enough to be my parents, some even to be my grandparents.

Four or five years ago, when I first started staying home to give out candy and watch TCM movies instead of trick-or-treating, most people still dressed up in costumes.  Everyone walked door-to-door, either because gas prices were too high to drive or because they weren't afraid of burning some calories before eating several thousand more in candy.  Kids would say "trick-or-treat" and usually took only one or two things voluntarily, sometimes three after asking if they could.  The same families would come back year after year, and only the kids took candy--not the kids and the kids' parents and the kids' grandparents.  No one took "some extras" for their fifteen cousins with broken ankles or for their dogs who "just love" candy.

Now, everyone drives huge vans and SUVs door to door, and I half wonder why some people don't just drive golf carts up the driveway from their SUVs to our front door as well.  Kids pound furiously on the doorbell until I'm sure they're going to break the door down with a battering ram, and it often turns out they're not even kids.  One lady has come to our door with her grandson for the past three years (with her own bucket for candy), and I'm sure she's at least 60.  She's a modern Mrs. Shimerda (go read My Ántonia...now!).  I honestly don't mind her that much because she's sweet and at least smiles and actually has a kid with her, but most of the other adults going door-to-door don't have a kid anywhere to be seen and don't bother trying to be nice.

What's more, half of the people who come trick-or-treating don't say "trick-or-treat" or "hi" or even smile like the 60-year-old lady.  They smile like the guy in the trailer of The Purge, sometimes complete with machete.

There is one traditional family each year.  They dressed up as a family of demonios once, as vampires the year after.  They all wear full costumes--mom, dad, and all three kids--but the parents don't have their own buckets for candy and they insist that their children be polite and not run off with our whole bowl of offerings.  They don't have fifteen cousins back at home with broken ankles who couldn't go trick-or-treating on their own, they don't drive a huge SUV that blocks out the moon, they don't pound on the door and wail like banshees because we're giving out Snickers instead of Starbursts.  They understand the simple fact that candy with chocolate is infinitely better than candy without chocolate.

Ironically, they don't speak English very well, but they say "trick-or-treat" and "please" and "thank you" and even talk to me about their costumes.  For people who barely speak English, they say a whole lot more than most people who come to the door speaking English as a first language.  They smile--and not like the Joker or like characters out of The Purge.  Each year, it's refreshing to see them waltzing up the driveway after hordes of Starburst-thirsty adults in ripped jeans and faded college t-shirts have stormed through.

I guess my question is, "Why has the average trick-or-treater family gone from being like the nice demonio family to being a horde of modern Mrs. Shimerdas?"  Are there still neighborhoods of legit trick-or-treaters, or is this the new norm?  

What will the average trick-or-treater be like when the little demonio kids grow up and are giving out candy themselves?