BOO! Your Neighbor...Or Pay the Price.

As I've said before, I LOVE HALLOWEEN. Fun, frightening, and full of chocolate!

However, there is one Halloween tradition I've been introduced to that I'm not so crazy about.

It's called "BOO-ing".

It starts with you finding an innocent-looking Halloween bag on your front porch. In the bag will be the following:

• candy
• some Halloween stuff (candles or bowls or pencils or stickers)
• a paper with a ghost on it and the word BOO! in huge letters
• the Boo poem, which is as follows:

The air is cool the season fall, soon Halloween will come to all. The spooks are
after things to do--in fact, a spook brought this to you. “BOO” is a shield from
witching hour, just hang it up and watch its power. On your front door is where it
works, it wards off spooks and scary jerks. The treats that came with crypted
note, are yours to keep, enjoy them both. The power comes when friends like you, will copy this and make it TWO. Then others here among our friends, will give warm fuzzies that do not end. We’ll all have smiles upon our faces, no one will know who “BOO”ed whose places. Just one short day to work your spell, or a big ZAP will strike your tail. And don’t forget a nifty treat, like something cute or something sweet. Please join fun, let’s really hear it--and spread some “BOO”s and Halloween spirit.

Essentially, once the BOO bag hits your front porch, you are under a time constraint to a) run out and buy gifts/shit to fill TWO MORE BOO bags, and then you have to b) copy the BOO sign and the BOO poem x2 to c) put in those two bags. THEN you have to scurry around looking for someone who hasn't yet been BOO'ed and slink up to their doorstep and drop the bag off without being seen (because then they'd know what kind of stuff you bought to put in their bags).

It's Hallow'een extortionism! And the worst thing is that you can't avoid putting the BOO sign up on your door (whether or not you actually do run out and BOO two more people) because if you don't, then the bags of stuff keep showing up at your doorstep and people eventually realize you're just hoarding the loot. (Then they come to burn you out of your home with torches, a la Frankenstein.)

Maybe this is just something that happens annually on military bases because of the close living proximity and because the identities of your neighbors are pretty well known. Whatever. I just resent the whole "game". It's right up there with bunko. Stupid and a waste of time/money. I'd rather make a batch of caramel apples and share them with the neighbors I know and like rather than slink around the base looking for one of the few remaining houses that doesn't have the damn BOO sign on the door.

Have you heard of this before? Did YOU get BOO'ed this year? Am I wrong to feel vaguely put-upon? I did, in fact, do my BOO, so I didn't blow it off. I also re-BOO'ed my gift bag, which made me feel appropriately vindicated.