As we age, we have to come to the point where we accept that there are certain things that are no longer accessible to us. One day, you're a kid who random old ladies stop to coo over and tell you "how handsome" you are, and the next you're just another dude, and it has been years since a stranger addressed you directly, let alone paid you a compliment, for any reason. And you have come to accept that jumping off anything, and even getting out of bed in the morning, are things that could cause life-altering injuries.
It's not that you have to age out of celebrating or having fun; no one really wants a grown-grass adult showing up on their doorstep late at night and knocking on their door and demanding things from them. It's cute when it's a baby dressed as a pumpkin, but not so much when it's a 6-foot-tall man with a beard dressed like Pippi Longstockings.
Unfortunately, by the time I was 12 years old, I was already around 6 feet tall, and this presented problems for me on multiple occasions due to my man-sized body being run by my child-sized brain. I specifically remember the year that I dressed as a Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings, of which the hood of the costume covered my very apparent baby face, and I had multiple adults pointing out that I was "too old" to trick-or-treat. I was pretty shy and didn't bother to correct them often, but would occasionally point out the fact that I was actually still a child, which would be met with incredulous looks and a reluctant offering of their bowl of candy.
In a similar vein, I had other experiences, such as the time my friends and I once had the cops called while we were playing tag in the woods at the end of the cul-de-sac in the neighborhood where I lived, because the neighbors thought there was an adult man chasing children around in the forest. But that's a story for another time.
I'm the accusations of being "too old" to trick-or-treat were leveled at me at an even younger age, so the concept of trick-or-treating was something that I was painfully aware of from a young age. It never really stopped me from doing it; I still enjoyed hanging out with cousins and friends, but it certainly lurked as an anxiety at the back of my mind every time we went up to knock on someone's door.
I don't think trick-or-treating needs to have a hard-set age limit, and certainly, the spirit of the season isn't something you should ever feel like you need to age out of. But, at 20, I think you are a bit old to be going around demanding that your significant other "take you" trick-or-treating like they're your parent, when you're a grown woman yourself and your significant other is a 25-year-old man. At that point, you should probably be doing what every other adult does on Halloween: attending costume parties or sitting at home watching Harry Potter for the umpteenth time.
Certainly, this disagreement between this young couple reeks of immaturity, and even goes to show, I think, the vast difference in levels of maturity that people often have at 20 years old versus just 5 years older at 25. While you can say what you want about age gaps, I know I absolutely would have been high-tailing it after this if I were him.
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The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
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