I gotta say, I didn’t see this one coming! When we lived in a house in a nearby town, we would get maybe 50 or 60 trick-or-treaters on a Halloween on a good, warm night. If it rained, perhaps 20 kids maximum. Here at Otterbein, there are no children, so we didn’t expect any visitors to show up.
I heard rumblings of plans for the villa courts, and now recall that somewhere a message was seen or heard that residents would not have to buy their own candy, that Otterbein would provide it. But nothing popped up on my radar to move me to action. I imagined a few residents dressing up and giving each other treats. Boy, was I wrong!
The old Boy Scout in me told me to do something, even though I doubted anything needed to be done. We had a flyer from the Big House that told us something vaguely like, “It’s going to be from 4:30 to 6:00.” What “it” was, well, I hadn’t a clue. However, I went to the local store at 2:00 and bought six bags of miniature candy bars. Not very large bags, and even at that, I imagined we’d be eating candy all winter until the chocolate got that white sheen on it that tells you it’s time to toss it out.
Our neighbors, who had moved into Otterbein in November last year were equally clueless and poo-pood my purchase as unnecessary.
Well, I should have guessed what was coming. Otterbein is not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but, as some pundit once quipped, you can see nowhere from your front porch. Houses out here are so far apart that trick-or-treaters would be lucky to score two candy bars before being run off the highway by all the trucks carrying the soybeans that are being harvested right now.
The onslaught started right at 4:30. By 5:00 we were completely out of candy, and the main body of marauding children was still two courts away and advancing rapidly. The staff in the Marketing office had been by at about 4:20 to offer us candy, but we had no idea at that time what was coming and politely turned them down. They were off elsewhere on campus when we ran out.
We had no choice but to retreat to our villa and pull the blinds! Talk about feeling cheap!
So, here’s the lesson learned… Otterbein is a gold mine for the kids. It’s safe, with plenty of parking for families bringing their little gremlins, there’s absolutely no speeding traffic, and certainly no trucks hauling soybeans to the elevators. The residents in the villas (I can’t speak for the apartments) were only too happy to pass out handfuls of candy to the waiting containers, and the children were only too eager to show off their costumes, most of which were assembled with painstaking care and pride.
And Kiki had a ball. She had been petted and fussed over to the point of collapsing. She put herself to bed at 8:00 and is snoring as I write this. Everyone had a fantastic time. Next year, I WILL be prepared!
