Halloween Candy

Easter has come and gone, but not without my beloved bestowing upon me an Easter basket. Yes, he most certainly did. A pink one with pink grass.  He had a theme going on, clearly.  He gave this to me on the eve of Easter after a rather prolific evening of champagning. Of course, in my slightly tipsy state, I teared up, always the sensitive one, feeling moved by his sweet gesture. No one other than my mom had ever given me an Easter basket. Further evidence that this young man is wonderful. Not that I need evidence, he reminds me daily.

Oh, Easter. The Easter basket got me reminiscing about all of my gifts of candy when I was younger.  My mom was always diligent with our baskets, always using the ones she had carefully handmade for us years before.  One was yellow, I recall, the other color slips my mind.  I do remember believing that no matter which one had been carefully placed in front of my seat at the kitchen table was really my brother's basket, but I don't think I ever told my mom. (Now she knows!  Hi, Mom!!) Of course, we always got delightful sugary treats that were only really around my house during the holiday seasons.  (Can I get an "Amen" for the stale Peeps?  Of course, I wouldn't eat those 'til around the 4th of July, so that was an exercise in patience.)

The other time of year when sugar was in abundance was Halloween, naturally, every kid's dream of a candy-filled world. My parents would dutifully buy candy every year, but after a couple of years, I began to notice a pattern.  My mom and dad would buy things like Smarties, Sweetarts and Tootsie Roll Pops to hand out to all of the tricker-treaters.  But they would also buy the fun-sized Snickers.  And fun-sized Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  These treats never got handed out, however.  They would be tucked away in my dad's dresser, hidden from the grubby hands of the green-faced witches and mini-devils coming to the door.  Everyone knows that the fun-sized candy bars were the jackpot of the trick-or-treating game.  (Never mind the occasional mega-jackpot of the full-sized candy bar!!!)  So I asked my mom and dad: "Why do you buy the good stuff, but only give out the kinda crappy candy?"  Their response?  They were saving it in case they ran out of the other candy.

It was a farce, I tell you! My parents were not celebration Halloween traditions, they were using the holiday as an excuse to HOARD. CANDY. The kind of candy that we rarely would get aside from holiday time.

Perhaps you think this to be a hasty conclusion. "Your parents aren't evil geniuses, cleverly hoarding candy, Amanda," you might be saying aloud from your computer screen right now. Well. I have further evidence.

One year I went trick-or-treating to another neighborhood. Every kid knows that this is a risky gamble, leaving one's own 'hood for greener pastures. At least in your own neighborhood, you know which houses give out the good candy and which houses turn their lights off and pretend not to be home. (And in my neighborhood, which older neighborhood kids like to play still on the porch until and unsuspecting child walks up at which point you yell "BOO" and make them cry.) My friend's neighborhood was bigger, so I rationalized, more houses, more candy.

This trick-or-treating was a wild success, finding more than one house with the mega-jackpot full-sized Snickers bar (left unattended on a porch? Even better!). After we returned home to my friends house to a slumber party, naturally, we emptied our pillow cases in examination of our loot. I decided to trade all of my Butterfingers. I mean, Butterfinger is a chocolate, yes, but when you have someone giving up her Milky Ways or Three Musketeers for a 'finger, get out. I'm trading it. So I traded every last one of those inferior chocolates.

When I arrived home the next day, my parents hovered. They wanted to see my loot too. I showed them and put it in the gallon-sized Ziploc bag required in my household (to monitor the "three pieces per day" rule). I made a flippant comment about trading all of my Butterfingers to my friend. My parents began to act weird. I asked them, "Mom and Dad, why are you being weird?" And one of them, I can't recall which one, sputtered out, "Well, perhaps we like the Butterfingers."

So you see, Halloween in my household was really a conspiracy. A conspiracy to bring chocolate into the household so that my parents could indulge in their sweet tooths much like the kids. Well, I never. Granted, I imagine around the time I have kids, I will have been without fun-sized bars every October for a good decade. Perhaps rather than judge, I should keep my yapper shut and learn.

Nah, I'd rather out them as the candy-hoarders I now know them to be.

(DISCLAIMER: To Mom and Dad, my very loyal followers, this entire passage was written in jest. Don't be offended. I remembered this story the other day and it had me laughing so hard I HAD to write about it. Love you!)