As I stood there, debating over my hundreds of options and weather or not I really wanted to buy the candy to go and sit in an empty house, it got me thinking about what my candy would say about me. Come on folks, we all know that as kids, we knew which houses to go to first for the good stuff. We all wanted the chocolate fun size bars and no taffy. We knew which neighbors might give us extra if we acted super sweet and cute. We also knew which ones to avoid unless we wanted a lecture about being too old to trick-or-treat when we were 11-years-old and out with a large group of friends. We knew to watch for groups with little kids because people we almost always in a more generous mood if you had some little kids in your group. Oh yeah, to kids, Halloween is as much of a tactical battle as it is a night out with your buddies.
What would my Halloween candy say about me? Well I could go with the bag of chocolate body parts. They are your standard chocolate that is now wrapped in tinfoil painted to look like a severed bloody foot or a bloodshot eye. This candy says, “I get you kids. You like creepy gross things and I am cool enough to give you what you want.” But two problems arise with this: 1. Little girls dressed as Sleeping Beauty may not be down with it and 2. Although the candy is pretty cool, they are still small and let’s face it, small candies are not always a big hit.
Another option I saw was your traditional bag of Fun Size Snickers bars; a staple for all trick-or-treaters. They are a tiny candy bar small enough to hide from you parents so that you can eat it when you go to bed even though they said only one piece and you had that after dinner. Plus Snickers have it all-chocolate, caramel, nougat, and peanuts. They are diverse enough to satisfy almost anyone. But then I got to thinking about what that said about me…everyone hands out Snickers. It shows that I am lazy and don’t care enough to put serious thought about my candy. Nope, I don’t want to be lazy so I will have to find something else.
Moving on I see bags of little boxes of Milk Duds and right next to them are bags of Blow Pops that are suckers filled with gum. These are two options that kids love! One, the boxes of Milk Duds are something a little different and they look bigger even though each box only contains about 4-5 Milk Duds, but with kids it is about what LOOKS bigger. And suckers with gum, well that is a candy that just keeps on giving! First a delicious crunchy outside that has some lasting power and then BAM! Gum in the middle to chew until it is tougher than a piece of leather and just about as flavorful. These were two types of candy that said I really understood what the kids want…I was going to be a great house for the kids to go to! But then it occurred to me…what this candy might say about me to my fellow neighbors who are parents. I am giving their children sticky, messy, chewy things that will rip out their fillings, get stuck in their braces, or make the couch a sticky mess! So I put the candy back and moved on deciding that I don’t want a mob of angry parents coming after me.
Handing out candy that isn’t individually wrapped, such as candy corn, would make me appear creepy, like I was trying to poison the children. Passing out pixie sticks could possible create a state of anarchy with sugar overload. And if I were to give them Frooties, well I can consider myself the lamest person in the entire neighborhood.
I was getting a little freaked out. This was a lot of stress and pressure. As the new person on the block I didn’t want to end up a laughing stock because I was handing out the wrong kind of candy. I wasn’t sure what to do. So I figured, screw this and grabbed myself a bag of Reeses Peanut Butter cups and headed to the check out lines. I will deal with it next Halloween. Now all I have to do is tackle what kind of Christmas lights I am going to hang up which may give me ulcers.
