By Marlayna McArdle Before we determine an exact age limit for Halloween, take a few minutes to empathize with who you’re targeting: imagine that you are twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen. (For the fourteen-year-old freshmen who don’t have to pretend, I can only wish you luck.) Your favorite Aeropostale jeans turn into floods overnight. You learn to operate a dishwasher. You are expected to shovel out the driveway first, and jump into a pile of snow second. Milestones are pelted at you with all the impersonal velocity of an overheated pitching machine, with the added challenge of being locked into the batting cage for several years. Now, imagine that you are in a period of transition as horrifying as the season itself; it’s late October. Before, you could seek refuge in October. As soon as the excitement of a new school year began to fade, you could find solace in doodling your Halloween costume in your notes, or slipping Party City catalogs between the pages of your required reading. Teachers seemed to have mastered the art of gradually increasing the amount of candy they handed out during class to cling to the vestiges of your attention span. Now, however, even Halloween has been corrupted by adolescence. It seems like everyone else is saying they’re way too old to celebrate, even though you’re in the same grade. Your classmates going to hang out at home and watch some PG-13 horror movies instead - or even R-rated ones! But what could be scarier than admitting you might want to go trick-or-treating anyway? Your parents ask if you want to go out to look for a costume this year, even though they’ve never had to ask before. You do the math, decide you’re willing to exchange the grams of sugar for an equivalent amount of cool points, and say no. By restricting people in their early teens from participating in Halloween, we as a society only make it harder to be an early teen. Sure, seeing a toddler in a Halloween costume is more heart-tugging than seeing a teenager in one, but should we really be handing out candy as a reward for simply being young? Instead of outcasting those who are still enjoying the holiday as they grow up, we should make their experience even better by celebrating it with them. Honestly, who needs a night to escape from the pressures of their age and collect free candy more, middle or elementary schoolers? If anything, we should enforce an an age requirement for trick-or-treating, not an age limit. Why hasn’t anyone put up a sign on their porch telling kids ‘YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO KNOCK?’ Photos Courtesy Of: pixabay.com
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Elena Caputo
Hi! My name is Elena, and I'm a senior at Wilson and one of the Editors of the Editorial section. If you have any questions or ideas or if you want to write, email me at [email protected]! Olivia MonosHello! My name is Olivia and I'm a junior this year, and one of the editors of the Editorial section! I'm really excited to write for the Paw Print again this year!
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