By Jack Lawler ’11 and Andrew Morrison ’11, Humor Editors

Well, another Halloween has come and gone, and those annoying trick-or-treaters still keep coming by and bothering you.  How nice would it be to finally get rid of those obnoxious pre-teens who make pathetic attempts to disguise their identities in exchange for sweet treats? We present to you, the Halloween Survival Guide: How to Scare Away Trick-or-Treaters.

Preparation before Halloween can ensure that some hooligans never even get to your door. Go to your local animal shelter and adopt the largest, most vicious dog you can find. After putting it through a three week training regime with Coach P in the weight room to increase speed and strength, feed him a diet of purely Indian Cuisine for the week leading up to Halloween. This will ensure that he is starving and desperate for food, and his suppressed rage can then be directed towards approaching trick-or-treaters. Plus, you get to feel good about yourself for giving an abandoned animal a loving, new home.

If the ruffians manage to advance past the guard dog, you must now attempt to scare them off immediately as you open the door.  Your best best is to try chanting demonic pledges in a hushed whisper, then collapsing on the floor in a seizure.  Hopefully, none of pre-teens will have the good sense to contact emergency personnel, but will instead run away in fright.

If any trick-or-treater still will not leave, prepare to enter into desperation mode; offer him prune juice instead of candy.  If your trick-or-treater has mature taste buds and this still does not work, you will have to resort to inviting him inside for a game of Trivial Pursuit. Everyone knows that no self-respecting pre-teen would be caught dead playing such a game.  In the extremely unlikely event that none of these options work, turn to water-boarding.

However, if a trick-or-treater has unusually high mental willpower, you will be forced into your  final move: flashing your Tucker Iverson poster at the offending trick-or-treater (included for easy access at right).  The sheer sight of such classical beauty will be too much for the trick-or-treater’s eyes to bear, and he will finally be forced to dash away.

Hopefully this article was funnier than the Middle School Skit.