Tomfoolery

 For the last 25 years, I have often felt that I wasn't really contributing much to this world in my professional life.

I have friends who are educators, doctors,lawyers and clergy. Some of my friends are tradesman ,some work for charitable organizations.

Me?

I sold Halloween crap.

How does selling a bunch of junk for Halloween make this world a better place to live?

Today for the first time, I realized just how important what I did for a living really was.

Christmas is a time for joy.

Thanksgiving is a time for gratitude.

The 4th of July is a time for celebrating our great nation.

What's the deal with Halloween?

Halloween gave us a chance to be silly.

It gave us the opportunity to let loose,to be outrageous,to carry on.

There is no holiday feast associated with Halloween,only huge bags of candy!

We decorate our homes and lawns.

We wear silly costumes.

We have parties.

We visit with neighbors.

We spend time with our kids.

We mingle with the parents of the children our kids go to school with.

Halloween allows us to laugh at ourselves, laugh at each other and more importantly laugh with each other.

It's what is missing today.

We don't laugh anymore.

We don't dress up.

We don't get silly.

There is no tomfoolery.

This is not a result of Covid.

Halloween has been canceled by the cancel culture.

In our industry, we constantly asked ourselves how far is too far when creating new product.

Is this in bad taste?

Are we being insensitive?

Is this too outlandish?

Is it too silly?

The answer was almost always ,no, it's Halloween, this is what we do!

If a product didn't do well at retail, well, lessoned learned.

Somewhere along the line that changed.

At some point some voice began telling us "you can't do that."

You can't make that costume.

You can't offer that prop or decoration.

"It's offensive!"

If it offends you, don't buy it.

Trust me, if it doesn't sell I won't carry it again.

No, we became too sensitive to every breath of wind .

We lost the ability to laugh at ourselves, to have fun.

Too gorey.

Too scary.

Too outlandish.

Too over the top.

Too sexy.

It's a sad place to be in.

It's a truly said state of affairs.

Unfortunately,it is the world we live in today.

Sad,very sad.

We need some good old fashioned tomfoolery.