Halloween is the chance to dress as your favorite superhero, TV character or monster. When you’re young, it’s all about candy. It’s your chance to stock up on all your favorite treats. When you get older, Halloween loses its sheen.

I liked Halloween more as a kid. Halloween as a kid is exciting, it’s an event. A night where your parents take you out after dark and you collect as much candy as you can carry while dressed up as your favorite super hero. Getting to dress up as spider-man while going around door to door and being greeted by people with smiles, saying, “nice costume.”

I still remember my plastic pumpkin bucket and my little cardboard folding box for UNICEF. If you got enough candy, with a little rationing, you could make it last till Christmas (when you got more candy).

As you get older and become a teen, Halloween is less exciting, and becomes less about wearing a costume and eating candy. As a teenager you just want to be out after dark and loiter with friends. For some teens, that could mean toilet papering or egging a house. I never had the right friends for that so for me, it was about being out at night after dark not wearing a coat as the temperature dropped to around 40 degrees. I maybe dressed up a couple of times as a teen, and I still got some candy, but overall, it was an uneventful night.

As an adult, Halloween changes again, some people have costume parties and contests. There’s also Freakfest in downtown Madison, but the music lineup is a crapshoot and you’re surrounded by a mob of people.

I guess I’m just nostalgic for the Halloween as a kid. Personally, I’d rather go around trick or treating instead of going downtown to Freakfest (which usually isn’t even on Halloween) or to a party with a bunch of drunken people I don’t know.

Maybe what I really want is free candy. Sure, I can buy my own now, but it’s not the same as collecting it door to door as a kid. Even if I felt the urge to get a costume and try and go trick or treating, I would just be a creepy adult wandering around the neighborhood asking for handouts.

Halloween was just better as a kid.