What's acceptable?

Happy Halloween! Tonight is a night of ghosts and goblins and candy and walking and seeing neighbors you otherwise tend to ignore. This is a time for kids, young and old to dress up as a favorite character, popular icon, or, for the older kids to walk around in street clothes (no costume at all) and prey on the kindness of strangers for the next day's sugar rush.

That's all in good fun mostly. It's fun to watch the kids who get spooked at the more elaborately decorated houses. It's fun to hear the kids laughing (and the parents and younger siblings yelling "wait for us!") It's fun to see the kids faces light up as they run away from the houses proclaiming and displaying their winnings.

It's not so fun to think of how much we're fueling the dentistry industry, but that's another story :-)

In my neighborhood there are only a few houses that really get all decked out for the holiday. A couple have smoke machines, spooky music, a few ghouls stuck around the yard, etc. We added a makeshift cemetery display and a few jack-o-lanterns this year as well as a few window clings in the bay window. There is a house a couple of streets over though that the kids call the "spooky house." These folks literally have thousands of dollars invested in Halloween decorations. Over 50 life-sized mannequins/props, fog, music -- the whole works! They put up their display several weeks before the "big day" and even have a guestbook for people to sign. It draws quite a crowd each night. It's all done in good, but scary, taste.

From the news on TV and the radio, and the papers, and the Web, not everyone has the same idea of what's in good taste though. Mock lynchings. Columbine-style costumes. A Ronco Rotisserie grill with a bloody baby doll spinning round! COME ON PEOPLE!

I'm sure that if you talked to your grandparent -- or any grandparent -- they'd have a TON of stories to tell you about how things are so much different than when they were growing up. I'm starting to feel like an old fogey now, though. How long has it taken, how many generations, to breed out the common sense gene, the respect gene, the gene that tells your brain when too much is too much from our society?

I understand that each of us individually goes from being completely reliant on our parents, to showing that we can survive without them. From knowing nothing, to knowing it all. All this by the time we reach teenager-hood. (I am soooo looking forward to that. NOT!). Most of us though, I think, I hope, turn the corner and come back to reality. Back to common sense. Back to a respectful individual. Not so for all of us though. Apparently there are those out there that lost their map and forgot to turn the corner. And then they had kids.

There are so many people out there that just don't get it. I'm not saying that I have parenting down pat -- I don't think that's possible -- but I think it's important to instill a certain set of values and judgements into our children. Society, peers and age in general will erode a lot of what we teach them over time, so maybe I'm over teaching now so that they still end up with something left when they hit puberty. Maybe I'm too old fashioned and need to just let it go. But I can't. I can't imagine a nation where there are no morals. No consideration for others. No respect for others. Wait -- I don't have to imagine. I see it thrown in my face everyday in the news. (Let's not talk about whether the news is portraying reality or someone's vision of reality right now.) Is that what our country would be like if our social morays "(the ethics that prevail by means of the unwritten code of social contract at any point in a given civilization)" continue to erode? I shutter to think of that time.

How do we decide what's acceptable? Who decided the 7 dirty words you're not allowed to broadcast? Who decides what local decency standards are? Who decides what words end up in the dictionary (They'll argue that they they are included due to popular use and that they don't condone or endorse their use, but rather make them available for people to understand the language better -- but simply by inclusion, it's lent a certain legitimacy. Remember all the controversy over the word "ain't?")

I'm torn here, because I very much believe in people's right to believe what they want to believe. I'm not trying to take that away from them. Nor their free speech to express those beliefs. I just wish that they would have some respect for others that maybe have a little more traditional sense of values.

People develop. Families develop. Nations develop. Let's hope that each is developing in a positive direction.