A few Iron Men and Captains America, zombies male and female (including an undead prom queen), a pirate girl who could have been quite sexy if she’d been old enough for her taste in clothing, a lovely princess a few years shy of kissing her first frog, a teen witch who bought her stockings and heels at Fredericks of Hollywood and the rest of her costume at Toys R Us, and the usual assortment of ghosts, vampires, dinosaurs, ninjas, bears, cats, hungry teenagers, etc, many of them barely old enough to lisp out a “thank you”. The youngest were invariably accompanied by rather attractive mothers dressed up as Suburban MILFs.

[young teen girls with black-framed glasses in relatively normal clothing was a big thing this year; they looked to be dressed up as something, but beyond “cute nerd girl”, I couldn’t guess]

Since the neighbors at the end of the street started putting on a haunted house a few years ago, I’ve bumped up my candy supply. I give out large handfuls, so I figured 40 pounds wasn’t going to cut it this year, and bought 11 five-plus-pound bags at Costco. I had maybe a bag and a half left at 8:30. If they’d kept coming for another half-hour, I’d have been out.