The "trick-or-treating" experience.

How would you explain "trick-or-treating" to someone who has never been?

Would you talk about the smell of wet leaves and clean, autumn air?

Would you try to describe the colors of the darkening evening, broken up and enhanced by the city lights?

Could you explain the thrill of passing headlights and a feeling of getting away with something sneaky?

Gathering free candy! Out past bedtime! Playing a part in a favorite costume!

Maybe you'd mention the patient enthusiasm that builds inside while waiting for the strange, front door to open.

What sort-of treats will they have?

Will something scary pop out at me?

Should I stand in the front of the crowd where I'll be first to get sweets, or in the back with the parents where I'm less likely to be startled?

If you were to try and explain this iconic, childhood experience, would you mention the mounting excitement as your bag filled with skittles and your plans to promptly trade all your snickers away? The rating of candy on a scale of gross to yum is really such a personal topic.

My thinking, in all of this, is that the only way to offer any naive soul a true knowledge of "tick-or-treating" is to march them down a suburban street on Halloween.

Although they've experienced a few Halloween parties, this year was a first for our children.

Now they've walked for themselves that exciting, creepy trek through the dark. They were entirely enchanted.

By the time we returned to Great-Grandpa's they were quite worn and ready to slumber (the sugar-low may have been a factor).

I hope your Halloween experience this year was magical and memorable.

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