I heard a voice: Andriena, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take photos of the trick or treaters.

Thinking it would be a simple task on a dark Halloween night, I accepted.

Little did I know that the new spook-night trend was to wear normal, everyday clothing.

I guess pre-teens and teenagers are frightening enough as they are and don’t feel a need to wear costumes or face paint.

I drove around for about an hour before I found a group of children with enough Halloween spirit to get their picture in the paper.

My spirit couldn’t help but to die a little inside as I watched so many children prance around in jeans, sweatshirts and fancy t-shirts.

I remember being a child and waiting to go shopping for costumes.

I have pictures of myself dressed as everything from a jester to a witch.

I was even vividly costumed when I took my nieces and nephews out on the as a high school.

More recently I enjoyed dressing up in my college years for yearly Halloween parties.

That’s the fun of All Hallow’s Eve.

But for some reason this year, the fun was gone.

For instance, as a searched for some great costumes Monday night I saw a group of three girls.

They were dressed in jeans with a black leather jacket over their t-shirts and a bandana covering their round heads.

If you looked closely at these young ladies, you could see a dash of red lipstick on their mouths.

I was expecting for them to tell me they were bikers, or something of the sort, but instead when I asked what they were, all three of them spoke the words “beauty queen.”

Maybe, just maybe, they had a colorful anecdote they forgot to mention, such as: “We are beauty queens who are enjoying a night out at the Faunsdale Bike Rally before our pageant in the morning.”

But my mind just wouldn’t rest with plain old “beauty queen.”

On the other hand, there were some wonderful costumes.

Another trio – one soccer player, one doctor, and one normal kid with blood all over him.

The story was that the soccer player hit the normal boy with the soccer ball and normal boy was taken to the doctor where he was mistakenly killed.

Great story!

I also saw dead prom queens, princesses, fairies, a vending machine, a green cat, a magician and The Thing from “Fantastic 4.”

After being disappointed with the lack of costumes this past Halloween, I made the decision that, if I ever decided to give goodies to trick-or-treaters, the rule is “no costume, no candy.”

And although I would prefer some elaborate ideas and costuming, a half-hearted attempt is always better than not trying at all.