Every year when fall comes around and I see pumpkins everywhere, I remember the eagerly awaited Halloweens of my past. Back in elementary school, I couldn’t wait to carve pumpkins, go to haunted houses, walk in the annual Halloween parades and eat an abundant supply of candy. Now as I proceed through high school, my excitement of Halloween has gradually faded.

Being the first holiday of the school year, Halloween was the holiday that I looked forward to the most when I was younger. The most exciting part of Halloween was to see the different costumes that kids were wearing in school.

I wore a variety of Halloween costumes throughout elementary school, ranging from a fat clown with a rainbow Afro, to a Jamaican Wizard. When our elementary school had costume parades for everyone to show off their costumes, my friends and I made a game of guessing which people were hidden behind which masks.

As a child, it is a terrifying experience to walk through a haunted house without assistance of a parent because there may be a “monster” waiting to give a startling sensation from around the corner. When I was 6, I decided to walk through the haunted house by myself.

After many graphic displays and frightening scares, I may have wet my pants. However, I managed to walk out of the haunted house with a gleam of confidence in my eyes, creating a memory that would come back to me on every Halloween.

On Halloween in seventh grade, it seemed that I was the only one out of my friends to dress up. Everybody seemed too busy to come with me that night.

So I set out alone for trick-or-treating and as I walked around the neighborhood, I noticed that most kids around me were half my size. As a lady at the doorstep was putting candy into the little kids’ bags, she told all of them how they were looking cute in their costumes. But when I stepped forward for some candy, she gave me a blank stare and dropped one small piece of candy into my bag. I felt like I could not fit in.

After coming home at the end of the night, I thought to myself, “Why did I go trick-or-treating this year?” I was searching for an answer. Was I trick-or-treating for the spirit of Halloween? Was I hoping to meet my friends in the neighborhood? Was I doing it to show off my Jamaican Wizard costume? Or was I doing it just for the candy? For a few minutes, I pondered those questions. The answer, I had to admit, was that I had gone only for the candy.

Now in high school, while most of the younger kids in the neighborhood start to go trick-or-treating with a bag in one hand and a flashlight in the other, I instead am in my room with a pencil in one hand and a textbook in the other, using my time productively.

I do not bother to go to the party store to buy any hats or masks. In order to take part in the Halloween spirit, I choose to help out my parents by distributing candy to the kids at my door.

Even though I am not as involved in the Halloween spirit as I was in elementary school, I will always remember the special memories of Halloween that I have experienced as a child. For now, I figure that one piece of candy should be enough to satisfy me on Halloween.