A Mommy Story

…from getting their CANDY.

For some strange reason, the weather prediction of a 100% chance of rain and high winds up to 50mpg during trick-or-treat didn’t persuade the city to move the annual candy grab back a day or two, like most sensible counties around us did.

Instead, they changed the trick-or-treat time from 6:00-8:00pm to 5:30-7:00pm. Because moving it up half an hour when the rain was scheduled to arrive around 4pm would make ALL the difference.

Our trick-or-treat was further hindered by school bus delays. (Again.) It would seem one overturned semi-truck on a highway that their bus doesn’t even travel on is enough to stop all traffic in the city. Columbus has no concept of how to drive in the rain.

Around 5pm, another parent tweeted me that he had received a robocall that all buses were running an hour or more late due to the single accident in the city. I was thankful to know where the kids were, but wondering why we hadn’t received the same robocall? I contemplated calling Transportation, to be That Parent again, but knew it would likely be pointless since there was probably no one there.

At 5:30, right when trick-or-treat was starting, the bus pulled up. And at the same time, the phone rang with the robocall regarding the bus delays. Too late.

We ushered the kids in quickly, sat them down for a few bites of dinner before letting them skip the rest and hurry into their costumes. Instead of two hours of trick-or-treat, they only had one and a half hours now, and they were anxious that they’d miss out.

Holding their pumpkin buckets for the loot and umbrellas to fight off the wind and rain, they ventured forth into the storm in search of free candy.

At first, Mira nearly blew away with her umbrella as the wind caught it before we left the driveway. We didn’t make it a block before she handed me her umbrella and said she’d rather get wet than keep dealing with her unruly windcatcher.

Cordy held her umbrella high, enjoying the struggle against the wind as she believed she had the super powers to use the umbrella to fight off the weather.

They didn’t make it as far as they usually do before the damp penetrated their costumes and they were weary from trying to remain upright when the wind pushed them every which way.

But they still had buckets full of candy, so the night was declared a success.

And because we’re days away from election day, I’ll also ask locals who are Columbus City Schools district residents to go check out the site I’m helping out with: