When you hand out the sweets at Halloween, do you give the kids the candy you don’t particularly want or like first? If you were down to giving a kid a Reese’s cup—I mean, a full Reese’s cup—and a roll of broken Smarties, you’d give the kid the Smarties, right?
I’m asking because some of the kids who came to my house may be surprised to find leftover Easter candy in their bags. Hey, beggars and costumed extortionists can’t be choosers. They might not even be surprised, and will just eat whatever gets tossed at them.
This weekend, the Cub Scouts were cleaning out their storage locker in the church basement, and were throwing out a bag of Easter candy. This year’s candy, I presume. My son, being admirably frugal, picked the bag out of the pile and brought it home to augment our Halloween candy. And I encouraged him. I thought it was a great idea.
First off, I always freak out on Halloween that we’re going to run out of candy. With every trip to the store, I’ll grab an extra bag of treats, just to have in reserve. When the kids stop home for a break, I make them pull out the things they won’t eat so I can pass them along to someone else. (And who can blame them for getting rid of Three Musketeers bars? Can we send this one to the candy afterlife like Maple Buns and Charleston Chews?)
These weren’t just any Easter nibbles. They were chocolate eggs. (I mean, Marshmallow Peeps would start to get a bit hard by now.) And, they weren’t just any chocolate eggs. These were eggs made of Nestle’s Crunch and Butterfinger and other attempts at crossover monopolization of holiday sweets. So, you know, nothing from the Dollar Store that advertises its chocolate as having “really chocolate flavor.”
When kids I didn’t know came up to the house, I didn’t slip them the Twix bars or the York Peppermints or the M&Ms. Those packets were all visible in the basket, nice and shiny. But I made a little pile of the chocolate eggs right up in the front of the basket, where their little eyes couldn’t see them, and grabbed a couple to toss into the first bags. (Dropping in more than one item always creates a sound that makes me look really generous.) All I’m saying is, if we’re going to end up with any leftovers, it better be the stuff that I’m gonna eat. I even ate one of the little eggs, and it was fine, just fine. I’m still here, aren’t I? It’s not like I really pimped them by handing out toothbrushes or religious pamphlets. Those kinds of people deserve to be deported.
And hell, it wasn’t Christmas candy. That would’ve been a little much. Well, maybe not. Does peppermint have a half-life?
The real question is… what do you give all the people who come with thier babies strapped to thier front holding that pillow case? This is precisely why all my lights are off at holloween and the dog is free to roam the house and bark like mad when there is a knock at the door.
Well, unless they made it work for a costume, like a Siamese twin, or the Alien bursting out of someone’s abdomen….then, ya gotta give ’em something.