One of the most common Halloween party activities is bobbing for apples. Other than apples being abundant in many areas for Halloween, there are the physics of the thing: Apples contain a relatively large amount of air and, since the skin is waxy, the air does not escape rapidly so they readily float. And, unless you cheat and go for the stem, their size and round shape make them fairly difficult to bite when bobbing about in the water.

Depending on the era, there might be more to it than just winning a game. At the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th, Halloween parties were full of fortune telling (often connected to predicting one’s true love or who one was to marry or when) the first to get an apple would supposedly be the first to marry.

But that connection had disappeared by the time I was bobbing for apples.

So, as cute as this vintage card is…

I hated bobbing for apples when I was a kid. If you were wearing Halloween makeup, it would usually be destroyed. At the very least your costume and/or hair got soaked. And, okay, I WORE GLASSES. So I could either take them off and be blind or keep them on and risk my specs falling into the water or having them jostled off my face to the floor. Not that the water would harm my spectacles, but falling or getting them knocked off part might…ohmigawd…break them.

Hey, my eyes were bad. Every six month for years (starting at age six) I got progressively thicker lenses. And there weren’t any “lightweight” or “shatterproof” alternatives. They were expensive and ugly. I spent a great deal of my childhood being afraid of breaking my glasses. Hated wearing them, yes, but better than being blind…

Plus—fer real—putting your face into a tub of cold water with no more reward than a plain old apple? Ick. And I bet boys spit in the water or, or, licked the apples and got cooties on them. Ick-ick!

Well, fright is a part of Halloween. Eventually I realized sharing spit with boys wasn’t so bad. But I was past apple-bobbing by the time I got contact lenses.

I still have my doubts about apple bobbing. If you have any doubts about the insidiousness of this so-called game, read Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, in which a girl is drowned in an apple-bobbing tub.