For a while now, mainly because the stores have had their Halloween displays out since the end of July, I've been thinking about what I should buy to hand out to trick-or-treaters this year.
My past efforts to buy treats I hoped would make the kids squeal with delight, however, have been slightly less than a rousing success.
Take, for example, the year I decided to give out packs of stickers instead of candy. The stickers were decorated with smiley faces in all sizes and colors. And what, I thought, could be happier than those? I was certain the trick-or-treaters also would have smiles on their own faces when they saw them.
I was wrong.
The really young kids didn’t know what the stickers were and tried to eat them. And the older kids’ expressions clearly told me they had better things to do than play with stickers. Although, the next morning when I spotted smiley faces stuck all over my car out in the driveway, I managed to convince myself that my stickers had helped unleash the children's hidden creativity.
So the next year, I bought small paper Halloween bags that were decorated with bats, witches and pumpkins, and painstakingly filled each one with exactly 10 pieces of assorted wrapped candy (fireballs, root-beer barrels, caramels, Tootsie Rolls, lollipops, etc.) then stapled them shut.
The kids actually looked scared when I handed the sealed bags to them.
“What’s in it?” one little boy asked as he hesitantly accepted it from me.
“It’s a surprise!” I said.
“Will it bite me?” he asked.
The next morning I found dozens of the empty bags scattered across my lawn. Apparently the kids hadn’t been able to wait until they got home to tear them open and see what was inside.
And apparently the kids also were a bunch of juvenile litterbugs.
But through years of trial and error, I finally found something that no red-blooded trick-or-treater could complain about…full-sized chocolate bars. The first time I handed them out, I finally got the reaction I’d been seeking for so many years.
“Wow! Big candy bars!” one trick-or-treater after the other shouted. “Awesome!”
Not so awesome, however, was my husband’s reaction when he had to eat things like canned spaghetti for dinner three nights in a row because I’d spent all of the grocery budget on Halloween candy.
“Exactly how many chocolate bars did you give out anyway?” he asked me as he lifted a forkful of spaghetti up to his mouth and then stared at it as if he were trying to conjure up some magical super-power to transform it into a T-bone steak.
I shrugged. “I don't know...about 75, I guess."
His eyebrows shot up. “Really? There didn’t seem to be nearly that many kids, judging by the doorbell.”
“Well, that's because a lot of them had sick sisters and brothers who couldn’t come out trick-or-treating,” I said. “So they asked for candy bars for them. One poor little girl, her brother told me, broke both of her arms. And another one fell off her bike and lost a few teeth. So I made sure to send home a Hershey bar for her rather than a Snickers. I mean, she wouldn’t be able to eat those crunchy peanuts without her teeth.”
My husband rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Those kids were pulling the oldest scam in the book on you! There are no sick sisters or brothers. If they like your candy, they'll make up stories like that just to get extra for themselves. Either that, or they'll run home, change costumes and come back for more candy later on.”
I paused for a moment before saying, “Now that you mention it, there was this hairy-looking, deep-voiced fairy princess who kind of resembled and sounded like a pirate who’d been here earlier...but without the eye patch.”
So the next year I bought fewer chocolate bars and vowed not to give out any extras for sick brothers or sisters. If the kid wasn’t well enough to go trick-or-treating, I decided, then he or she probably should be eating chicken soup, not chocolate anyway.
Unfortunately, it rained so hard that Halloween night, the only kids who ventured out were dressed like the Gloucester fisherman. So I ended up with loads of chocolate bars left over. My husband and I ate so many of them during the next few weeks, I actually could see the cavities popping out in our teeth and hear our arteries clogging.
Alas, this year, with Halloween just around the corner now, I once again am faced with the dilemma of what to buy for the trick-or-treaters, mainly because the price of chocolate currently is high enough to qualify it as gourmet fare.
“I was thinking that maybe I should just get a bunch of quarters and give one to each kid,” I said to one of my friends the other day. “After all, what kid doesn’t like money? And it will be much cheaper than buying Halloween candy.”
“Quarters?” he repeated with a laugh. “Are you still living in the mid-twentieth century? There's nothing a kid can buy for a only a quarter nowadays." He lowered his voice and his tone grew serious as he added, "But hey, I do have a great suggestion, and it will save you tons of money."
He'd piqued my interest. "What? What is it?"
"On Halloween night, just do what I do...lock the doors, shut off all the lights and don't answer the doorbell.”
I think Mr. Halloween Grinch could use a smiley-face sticker.
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
No comments:
Post a Comment