Josh Abt does not care if you think he is too big, too old, too brazen to be doing this anymore. At 17, he is old enough to appreciate that there are things in life more important than a stranger's disdain.
Almond Joys, for example.
Especially free ones.
Which is why the Vienna teen plans to don a purple Mad Hatter costume tonight and go trick-or-treating with a handful of friends who may or may not bother to dress up before jostling for position on front porches with kids half their age.
"When I'm mature, I'll stop going," Josh reckons.
"He'll be going till he's 80," deadpans his friend Stacey Schwarz, a 16-year-old sophomore who hasn't decided yet whether to join her James Madison High School classmates on the candy quest. Depends how bored she gets.
Are you ever too old?
Josh ticks off the reasons to go: "We want to have a good time, we're low on funds. . . ."
"Alternatively, you could say we're shameless," offers Mike Boren, 16, who shrugs off the annoyed responses when adults see him holding out his treat bag.
"People are like, 'Aren't you too old? Why aren't you in costume?' Mostly they just kind of grumble but give you the candy anyway."
Call them greedy, call them intimidating, call them the unwelcome elephants in the Snickers factory, but the teenagers who inevitably appear on Halloween doorsteps are grasping for more than a fistful of sweets.
"When you're our age, it's like it's cool again to go," explains Anna Karnaze, a 17-year-old junior from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, who went as a toilet-paper mummy last Halloween and plans to trick-or-treat as a pirate tonight.
"I'm probably not going to be able to do this stuff anymore in college," she laments.
Finishing dinner at the Tysons Corner Center food court, her friends nod in sad agreement.
Most say they stopped trick-or-treating after eighth grade; it just wasn't cool . But at 16, they suddenly yearned to go out there again.
Avni Sharma thinks the nostalgia has a lot to do with the day-to-day stress and pressures that older teens face. Halloween falls at the end of the quarter for many high schools, and the prospect of scamming M&Ms instead of cramming for exams has its appeal. "When you're 12, you're trying to grow up," Avni says. "When you're 16, you're trying to go back to that age."
Last year, Anna confesses, "I paid my little sister five dollars to let me sort her candy."
Six girls at the table snap their heads up and let out a collective "oooooooooooooh." The prospect of tallying peanut butter cups and calculating the ratio of, say, Nerds to Dots, is as delicious as the bounty itself.
‘It's just a carefree night’
Anthony McRoy fell asleep counting the Halloween candy he spread out on his bed last year. "I counted a thousand pieces and got tired," recounts the 16-year-old from Rockville. "I woke up and I had lollipops stuck in my hair, Skittles on my head. . . .
"Me and my friends, we're mature, but still, it's something to do," says the John F. Kennedy High School senior, on a break from his barista job. "I still see myself trick-or-treating five or six years from now.
"I'm thinking of being a pirate this time, or maybe a surgeon, or Leatherface from the 'Chainsaw Massacre.' We'll go to Georgetown or drive out to the Virginia suburbs -- each year I like to pick a different place, it's more exciting."
Anthony and his friends get 30-gallon trash bags, "and the goal is to fill them by the end of the night. It's something to do, and it gets your mind off stress. It's just a carefree night."
He is undaunted by the occasional rude reception, like the homeowners who snap, 'Only little kids are allowed here,' or the woman who slammed the door in his face last year. "She said, 'You're entirely too old,' " Anthony recalls.
Ian Laird of Bethesda has his own system for discouraging the older teens who ring his bell on Halloween.
"You just don't give them the best candy," says the father of three boys. Ten-year-old Robert, trying on severed rubber arms in a Halloween store, scowls at the prospect of sharing Halloween night with trick-or-treaters old enough to be his babysitter.
"I think it's creepy," he says. "They just want candy and to egg houses."
"They're just out for some sugar," says his mother, Ann Hibbard. "I find it annoying when kids come to the door with no garb. C'mon, if you're going to come to my door, at least put on a mask!"
Holly Maginnis, a middle school teacher who lives in Falls Church, is amused by the sight of "such big people in costume."
"I think I did the same thing. There was a little break, but then I do remember trick-or-treating through high school. I was Bo Peep one year. That was a good way to get to the party -- tell your parents you were going out trick-or-treating.
"Girls enjoy it for the camaraderie. For boys, it's still about getting as much free candy as they can."
Truth be told, the 32-year-old mother of two is already plotting to go trick-or-treating again herself.
"I told my husband that when the kids are a little older, we're going to Old Town. I hear that they give the kids full-size candy bars and serve the adults mixed drinks."
