Happy Hallowedween

This morning, at least as far as Caleb was concerned, I was awakened by having my eyelids pulled open, the sound of "Gammy, Gammy, COME ON GAMMY!",  growing clearer and clearer, until I realized that sadly, it wasn't a dream.
As I tried valiantly to keep my eyes closed, I uttered, 'Yes Caleb? What do you want?" and as I knew he would, he responsed NOT quietly with a list which contained yogurt, oatmeal (of course,we didn't have any of his oatmeal on hand this morning) bars (breakfast variety) and cawtoons, in that order. When I quickly peeked at the clock, which as I should have known, said 5:20, I also happened to see something out of the corner of that particular eye that made both of my eyes open wide in shock or wonder, or something.
Caleb, who doesn't yet dress himself, had removed his pj's, replacing them with a hawaiian summer shirt, a plaid bathing suit, some of MY orange striped socks (because they have spiders on them) a cloak made of some green fabric that I purchased for a quilt (and which he held tightly in his little fists and kept picking up until I found a giant safety pin) and a santa claus hat.
As my head fell back onto the pillow in defeat, I heard myself groan, "Oh NO, it's candy day!" If I even give that kid a popsicle he becomes richochet rabbit after he takes maybe 2 bites, and he eats lollypops whole so he can get more, faster.
Yea, okay. I have been attempting heartily to play this day down and bury it in the backyard.  Nonetheless, you just can't fight peer influence, or the fact that these little kids actually talk to each other about things like PLANS! 
I also remembered at that point that he brought a paperbag with one of those Halloween treat bags that we used to get when we were small and no psychopath had yet placed a razor in anything. His was filled with popcorn and raisins. When I saw that I just remember thinking, "poor kid, what a ripoff, at least ours had M&Ms in em".
So school wasn't letting it go either. I know when I am defeated.
Trouble is that both last year and this year everytime I took him to get a costume he was 'too scared' and they were all too scarey to him. His knuckles turned white on the handle of the shopping cart he was sitting in. Last year we had to revert to a pair of blue striped knit pj's, his sneakers and blue spray painted hair. When anyone asked him what he 'was', he simply said, 'bad guy'. He wasn't speaking at all well last year,
This year he is more than capable of articulating most clearly that he wants to be 'Spiderman Gammy, okay?' Sure, I thought on many occasions during the past several weeks, by Halloween he'll have given in. Knowing that I wasn't going to spend 25 bucks on a costume as I had last year, and like last year, have him refuse to wear it at the last minute; and, as this actual day drew closer I rationalized that we live so far out in the middle of nowhere that I don't even have to buy any candy, we just moved here and don't know the community all that well. So how was I supposed to know (even though I do have friends with 4 year olds who DO know, I didn't ask) where would we go anyway? Certainly there was no off-base Naval Housing here as there is in Brunswick, which is where I took him last year.
In the end, as is the usual outcome when you live in chaos with a four year old, the costume that he put on (now with sweats beneath them) to wake me up in will suffice for the entire day, and if he HAS to go somewhere tonight (I'm not pushing my luck quite THAT far!) it'll do then too.
When I was a kid nobody had store bought costumes but the grown-ups and those were all slutty anyway, if we wanted to look slutty we knew how to do it without going to Frederick's of Halloween to do it. Costumes were supposed to be homemade, that was a big part of the whole gig.
As we got older everyone went as a ghost or a 'hobo'; but I remember a few good witches, fairies and mummies, cheerleaders and teddy bears, even a lifesaver-homemade, from long ago.
How are our kids going to learn to be resilient, self reliant and imaginative, even how to handle a birthday party emergency (later, dinner party) if we don't let them take things from the house, from our fabric stash and Christmas decorations and concoct an as yet to be named Super Hero?
Since I'm not pressing the candy thing, or planning on going out in the 35 degree windy and gray late afternoon this year, for Caleb this is just a really fun day when he gets to hang around the house in anything that he wants to wear. He gets to not get in trouble for raiding the Christmas box in the basement, we even baked some brownies with orange frosting.
The point is that he is happy. This appears to be enough for him, and it is probably the last year that I'll be able to get away with it. I think that he was pretty scared of the costumes he saw on people last year anyway, so for all I know, he doesn't even want to go out later. But it will be nice to relax this evening and send a happy little kid to bed, probably still wearing his 'costume'.
Instead of having a night of shivering, eating too much candy, being a chocolate sticky cranky and crying mess all the way home in the car, and then fighting with Bob about taking his beloved costume off so that he could take a bath, while I am downstairs checking and then hiding the candy in the freezer to dole out a couple of pieces at a time (also very unlike my Halloween memories when the only candy hiding was done by us was from our mother who had a bad jones for snickers bars, and from one another because we'd happily steal all of someone else's take and blame it on "It wasn't ME, jerk!", because there were four of us and we could.
I don't like what halloween has turned into, it's far too commercial and filled with precautions and costumes that are pre-made of cheap fabric. Bah humbug, let's go Christmas Shopping, did you see the decorations that they put up in Walmart already??