Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin to the rescue

In a matter of a couple of blocks, we ran into a life-sized Woody and Buzz from “Toy Story,” twin zombies with blood dripping down their clothes, maniacal-looking clowns similar to the one featured in the movie “It,” and a woman straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale, the TV show envisioning a totalitarian future state.

We visited our daughter in Northern Virginia over the weekend and I half worried about what we might find around the next darkened corner. It didn’t help, that the street lights seemed especially dim. When I gripped my wife’s hand especially tight, she reminded me that it was all make-believe.

Fortunately for us, we saw earlier in the day a little kid dressed up with his dad as the Super Mario brothers, two other kids as Spiderman and Ironman prepared to save the day and, of course, a cuddly little Elmo.

Everywhere I looked this weekend I found kids and adults dressed to the nines for Halloween. My wife and I made most of our kid’s costumes over the years, these looked like they came right off a television or movie set. In a word, they looked “professional,” they were certainly out of the league of any we ever had ourselves or got for our kids.

We also found store after store peddling huge bags of candy, that will be marked down 50% off on November 1, and bars packed to the gills with partiers. I must admit a part of me looked back to a simpler time.

I drove home Sunday mulling where Halloween had gone over the edge, where the fun had been taken away. Fortunately for me, I stumbled across “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” on television. I was reminded of Linus waiting up all night for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown trick-or-treating and getting a rock, and Snoopy as the brave World War I flying ace, fighting heroically against the Red Baron.

When I was a kid, my friends and I used to look forward every Fall to the Great Pumpkin coming on TV. I was reminded once again of the joy of dressing up for a few hours to play make believe and the joy of hanging with friends. I was reminded that Halloween is for the kid in us all. Of course, I’m no fool, I’m still running the other way if any zombies come knocking on my door Halloween night.