With one hour left of Halloween night, a student works furiously on the spookiest thing out there- the essay due tomorrow. Gone are the days of begging candy off strangers, and having no greater work load than sorting your loot and hiding the good stuff from pesky older siblings. Gone are the days of incredible anger at the owners of the hands who so selfishly stray into your favorites pile.

As I rifle through the candy my sister worked so hard for, I feel nothing but justice. Who has more right to this loot, a kid who won’t understand the stress of a real class for another 8 years, or a slightly overgrown kid who is in the thick of the high school experience? I now live in a world where Halloween is just another Monday night fading into morning as I scramble to meet deadlines. But the enormous sugar rush tinged with a bit of guilt reminds me that this is no ordinary night. Tonight is a night of festivity.

At the age of seventeen, I have finally realized the true meaning of Halloween. It is not to celebrate childhood or ghouls, or the jittery excitement of tromping around your neighborhood at night; the true purpose of Halloween is to give every parent and sibling out there a chance to be naughty as only a child can. A chance to take candy from a kid who took it from a stranger at promptly six to eight o’clock. Halloween is a time of remembrance and nostalgia. Halloween is a time to gorge on stolen candy and a lost childhood.