While I've made peace with trunk-or-treats in my adulthood, as a teenager I had a personal vendetta against them for hurting my Mom. Story below covers more details, those not interested can just read the next comic page on the website: https://www.furryexperience.com

There's actually nothing wrong with trunk-or-treating, in many ways it's safer than than traditional trick-or-treating. They're typically held earlier in the day, when visibility is better. It's easier for parents to keep track of their kids in a small circle of cars than a large neighborhood, and it's easier to prevent younger kids from being bullied by older ones.

However, those benefits do come at a cost-some of which are reviewed in this comic. The one that isn't reviewed in this comic is sometimes called "poaching." Because kids can finish with a trunk-or-treat in an hour, it's not unusual for parents to drive their kids to several trunk-or-treats in various neighborhoods, so their kids get a full night of Halloween experiences. Again, there's nothing typically wrong with this, but poaching kids did make my Mom very upset.

My Mom was born in the U.S., but spent her childhood in New Zealand-where there's no trick-or-treating on Halloween. When returning to the U.S. as a teenager, she was told she was too old for trick-or-treating. Consequently, as an adult she always worked to make Halloween an extra-special holiday, particularly in the treats she handed out. She spent a lot of time with our neighborhood's kids throughout the year, and for Halloween always created detailed, intricate goody bags and sweets to hand out. She'd start planning and putting them together in August to make sure they were ready in time for Halloween night. Her favorite part of Halloween was seeing how us kids in the neighborhood would light up at her creations each year.

When I was a teenager, enough parents in the neighborhood had heard about trunk-or-treating they wanted to try it out. So all the families, including my Mom, set up for Halloween in the church parking lot instead of our houses. Children started arriving early, and my Mom started handing out her masterpiece that year-home made chocolate suckers in the shapes of bats, rats and pumpkins-being held together by clear sucker sticks stuffed with hard candy. As she was handing them out, she noticed she didn't seem to recognize many of the children who had come. In fact, the first wave was children that arrived weren't even from our neighborhood-they'd been brought there by parents from other parts of the area. And they didn't seem to care about how special my Mom's treats were, these kids were trying to get through all the cars as fast as they could before moving on. By the time the neighborhood kids started showing up, nearly all of my Mom's chocolate candy suckers were gone.

The whole incident left my Mom pretty upset-she'd put a lot of work into those suckers, and not only did they not go to the children she'd spent time with and cared about all year-they went to a group of kids who didn't even notice what was being put in their bags. When our neighborhood started up the trunk-or-treat again the next year, my Mom didn't participate. Anyone who wanted her treats would have to come to our house for them.

The lesson of this story (or this comic) isn't to boycott trunk-or-treating, there's a lot of positive aspects about it. But when you do go roaming for free candy on October 31st, regardless how, at least take the time to thank and appreciate the people handing it out-they're making an effort to help you have a special night.