Give Us Something Good To Eat

One of the downsides to joining the choir, I thought, was that I wouldn’t be able to have trick-or-treaters since I had rehearsal on Halloween. I didn’t have trick-or-treaters last year, either, because I was at work and then I had to come home and barf for the rest of the night. Something told me that barf and trick-or-treating didn’t go well together.

So, anyway, I’ve never had my very own trick-or-treaters.

This year, I was moping around whining about how I wouldn’t have any trick-or-treaters because I would only be home until 7:15 when someone pointed out to me that, duh, 6 to 7 is like the prime hour for trick-or-treating. So then I freaked out because I didn’t have any candy.

Last night, I went to the grocery store to get some candy for my very first trick-or-treaters and I was completely overwhelmed by the options. I don’t know any of my neighbors and have no clue how active the trick-or-treating scene is in my community, so I was not about to spend $10 on one of those super-ultra-megamix bags of candy that might go untouched. And I had to get candy that I actually liked in case no one came to my house and I was forced to eat it all myself while weeping silently about my lack of trick-or-treaters. But I couldn’t get, like, Dove Promises (even though I like them) because I’m pretty sure kids would consider Dove Promises to be old-people candy and I am not about to be the person whose house everyone avoids because she gives out old-people candy.

Although I guess I couldn’t be as bad as the possibly senile old guy who used to give out Easter and Christmas candy in the neighborhood where I lived as a kid. And we’re not talking early-season Christmas candy here. We’re talking LAST YEAR’s Christmas candy.

I’m not motivated enough to be the really cool house with the decorations and stuff. I just have the one little hanging thing on the door. No jack-o-lanterns or anything. So at the very least I need to have good candy.

So I got a bag of fun-sized Twix. Because I like Twix, and kids like Twix, so I figured it was a win-win situation.

Side note: There is a guy in the world whom some friends of mine have referred to as “Post-Coital Twix Guy” for, like, years now. That story involves Halloween and fun-sized Twix and is probably best told another day.

Okay, so now I have my Twix in the very festive orange plastic Halloween candy bowl, and I’m not sure how to hand it out. Do I give them the candy myself or do I let them pick it out? If I let them pick it out, do I have to tell them to only take one piece? Or two pieces? Is that totally miserly? What if I don’t limit it and some kid takes like fifty pieces and then I have to run to CVS to get more? Holy crap, I didn’t get enough candy. I should go to CVS and get some backup candy anyway. What if I do limit it and/or hand out one to two pieces and I become that stingy bitch who has good candy but rations it out like we’re in Depression-era middle America?

I think I don’t have enough candy.

I had no idea the pressure to be a good trick-or-treat house would be so intense.

15 Replies to “Give Us Something Good To Eat”

  1. I think there should have been some mention of how fun-sized candies are not in fact “fun” at all.

  2. It’s true. It’s always fun to eat more, and America loves fun, and that’s why we’re fat. I’m not judging, as I am afflicted with the fatness, I’m just saying. America Loves Fun. At any rate, I was at my friends Greg and Amy’s tonight, and on the second go-round, I answered the door. I gave each kid a handful of the totally awesome Halloween mix achieved when I dumped my big ol’ bag of SweeTarts/Nerds/Runts/Laffy Taffy into Greg and Amy’s Chocopalooza. Then I realized that there was like, almost no candy left. And I panicked. “Oh my GOD, I should have asked you guys how much you give! Do you give one? Or like, 3?” Greg stopped me, looking me in the eye with his crazy-ass devil contact lenses. “Sandy, I give each kid as much candy as I can wrap my tiny little hands around.” Whew.

  3. I didn’t get any trick-or-treaters this year or last, but I realized that I live in a No Solicitation complex, which is trick-or-treating soliciting? I’d say no, but whatevs…

    So I always (the 2 halloweens I’ve been on my own) buy like 3 bags of the mixes, like snickers, skittles, and milky ways, or whoppers, kit kats, and starbursts. I like a good mix of chocolate and a fruity candy. I would mostly likely be the handful kind of person, unless I knew from a past halloween that lots of kids came to my house. I would like to be the full size candy bar house when I grow up.

    But yeah, no trick-or-treaters for Ginny, so I ordered pizza, just so someone would knock on my door tonight. Grilled chicken pizza from Papa Johns (Chicken, onions, and roma tomatoes) Is good btw, but you wouldn’t eat it cause of the onions.

    This comment is officially too long… gonna watch some skeleton Conan now.

  4. I was worried we wouldn’t have enough candy too. On Halloween night on the way back from work I was given the directive, “Get the good candy! Chocolate bars! None of that wrapped-in-cellophane-at-both-ends crap!” This was from Ray, who was, the week previous, guilty of eating half of the “good” candy that we’d purchased. Now we have too much left-over “good” candy. So we are going to spend the next month getting good and fat.

  5. Halloween is my very favorite holiday. This year I made a giant box out of plywood and painted it to look like a jack-in-the-box. I dressed up in this really hateful-ugly clown costume, sat on a chair in the box and my hubby and kids stuffed colored cellophane all around me. They left to go trick-or-treating and my neighbor came over to hand out my candy. I just sat there in my box, not moving, and when the kids would take candy from the bowl that my neighbord was holding, I would jump out of the box and scream or laugh or something. I made some really little kids cry. It was GREAT!

    We are the weird Griswald-like family who goes all out for Halloween… Fog machine, spooky music, labratory with jars full of eyeballs and spiders and stuff. We give out little individually wrapped treat bags with the little fun size Snickers, Hershey’s and KitKat’s and then we throw in the fruity candies like Skittles, Starburst and Laffy Taffy. A couple of eyeball gummies or gumballs and a Capri Sun and a bag of chips or pretzels later and we’re all done! It’s a shame this only happens once a year :(

  6. wow, i’m a miser. back in the day, you got one fun-sized candy. a crunch or hershey. maybe some smarties or those horrid black and orange peanut butter things.

    i guess i’m old school an all you people are why kids are fat!! :)

    i was going to say one, maybe two twix. i’m terrible. that’s why i don’t have trick-or-treaters or am never home for that shit. evil old 32 year old me. who doesn’t like halloween. : /

  7. Fat kids? Shoooot, have you SEEN my ASS?
    My laissez-faire attitude toward candy and other such things is solely responsible for what my sisters have recently begun calling the apple-dumpling ass.

    Have I mentioned that I hate my sisters sometimes? It’s true.

  8. Last year we approached candy-giving with the give-em-a-big-handful method. But then we ran out of candy in about 30 minutes and the children were very angry. We even put a sign up on our door that said we had no more candy and they kept ringing the doorbell until we answered to make sure we were, in fact, out of candy and how the hell could we be out of candy? So this year we had to ration. We also had more I think. At any rate we ended up with leftover candy which is not so good for my fat ass. The funniest moment this year was when one kid came up to the door, did the trick or treat bit, and screamed to his friends across the street as he pointed to me holding the bowl of candy “Hey guys! I got one!”

  9. Lorie, mentioning “Post-Coital Twix Guy” without providing a narrative borders on the fundamentally cruel. I mean, that’s Abu Ghraib level torture; I’m having all of these delicious (ahem) possibilities in my head.

    I’m a 3 Musketeers guy myself.

  10. So did you get any trick-or-treaters?

    We went the stupid route and bought the $10 mix bag with crap like sweet tarts, smarties, etc. Who are we kidding, we should have gotten a giant bag of chocolate. I was pretty excited about having some trick-or-treaters. Since we live in a townhouse now, I figured we’d definitely get some. Since we just moved in we didn’t have time to decorate to let the little kiddos know it was safe to come up our steps for candy. Also, our porch light is out. Needless to say we didn’t get a single trick-or-treater and we’re stuck with a $10 bag of non-chocolate. Dude, if one kid had come to the door, I would have given him that whole freakin bag. I don’t know what we’re going to do with all of it. Boo.

  11. One of our trick-or-treaters was upset and told us that we had better candy last year.

    Another one opened his bag and said “3 or more” and when I put my usual 2 pieces of candy in his bag, he said “That was only two.” Jerk.

    My dog was bad the entire time. Poor little kids would come up to the door and he would jump against the door barking like crazy. It was kind of funny to see them run as fast as they could back to the sidewalk. I eventually locked him in my bedroom .

    Also, the kids I babysat like 10 years ago showed up. It’s crazy, they’re taller than I am now.

  12. what’s wrong with sweet tarts? they rule. although, i have to admit i am not into smarties like i was when i was a kid. i really used to like those babies. now, not so much.

    don’t call sweet tarts “crap,” though.

    however, i have to throw something out here for debate/discussion/research:

    i freaking LOVE chewy sweet tarts. and i LOVE chewy spree.
    and i have this friend who thinks chewy items are just dumb. that the original versions of things (we’re talking non-chocolate, i have different opinions of altering chocolate items) are better and that one shouldn’t chewyize things.

    so. what’s your opinion? chewy or no? is the chewy delicioso? or do you prefer to leave your sweet/non-choco items hard?

    (shit, lorie. sometimes when i comment, i realize — i should have just posted this as a post on my blog. my apologies.)

  13. I am DEFINITELY pro-chewy. I love chewy Sweet Tarts and chewy Spree. I love them more than the originals, in fact.

    Also, I’m totally pro-comments as discussion areas. No worries there.

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