Are you too old to go trick-or-treating without getting weird looks? Do you miss hauling around a pillow sack of candy from complete strangers only to find most of it was expired? We might not be able to make all the scaries go away, but here are some (college-appropriate) substitutes to replace the trick-or-treat thrill:
1. Smuggle food from Jo’s.
Let’s be honest, trick-or-treating is just disguising yourself in costume to go around the neighborhood and ask for free food. Instead of a vampire or pirate, you can just dress up as a burnt out 20-year old (so original!), and your efforts might reward you with a sweet treat: a stolen pop tart, or if you’re really good, a Jo’s cookie.
2. Have a costume fashion show
Pick a neighborhood block (or several) of your choosing, gather with friends, and strut your stuff in the costumes you totally haven’t painstakingly planned since last November 1st. For an even more authentic experience, ring all the doorbells before you walk and accept any candy thrown your way with a pose. Just don’t wait around long enough for the noise complaint and you should be good to go.
3. Go out
If you think about it, trick-or-treating was the closest you could get to a college Friday night in elementary school: walking around dressed up in the dark with all your friends and (if you were lucky) minimal parent supervision. You can do all that now with absolutely no parental supervision and a substance of choice (or none – the point is, there are no rules anymore) to spook up the night.
4. Take a look at your bank accounts
Just like you need to count your candy, pick which ones to hide and budget the rest to get your sweeth tooth through the year, you also need to keep track of your funds and budget the rest of your social, shopping and grocery needs. Did you go over budget on all your costumes this year? Probably. Do you care? Not right now, but you will in a few weeks. After all, money comes and goes, good costume pics are forever, and a girl’s gotta eat. Right?
5. Go job hunting
If you completed idea #4, you’re probably realizing that your accounts might need a little more love. Trick-or-treating is basically a glorified hunt – why not hunt for a way to financially support yourself instead? We know it’s scary, but you don’t always need to walk up to random strangers to do it, although building your web (we don’t talk about the word starting with ‘network’ and ending with ‘ing’ here) might make the search easier. The ultimate goal is to have enough so that you can just go and get the candy you want instead of walking around to get it from random people. That way you get many treats, no tricks, and (hopefully) all the thrills, even in adulthood. We wouldn’t count it though. Maybe the last time you actually went trick-or-treating was also the last time you would actually feel something.
