Trick or Treat - You choose

I cant stand trick or treaters.
I know, I know. It is a kids holiday. I am supposed to love giving away free candy to kids dressed as fairies and spidermans.
But I don’t.

Years ago I lived in a nice neighborhood that was known to have lots of treaters and we got hit pretty heavy. People would come from miles around so they could put their kids out at one end of the street and pick them up on the other with their bags full of goodies.
Some time in the evening I had to run to the store, so I put a bowl out with candy and a sign that said “take one”. I was gone 5 minutes. The bowl was empty. I had been robbed!

Every year it is the same. A few kids I know show up in the cute outfit so that the parents can show them off and then a bunch of kids I don’t know show up with an open bag begging for candy. Some of them don’t even have costumes. I wish I had a rotten apple to give those no costume kids. I remember Charlie Brown getting a rock in his sack. That is funny. But I know the little hoodlums would just throw it at my house.

Don’t get me wrong. I was a little fat kid who knew how to work Halloween for all it was worth. We hit every house within distance and hit the relatives twice. I had two bags. One bag stayed in the car and one bag went with you to the house. Once I got goodies I emptied them into the one in the car and then went to the next set of houses with only a piece or two in the bag. When they answer the door you give big happy “Trick or Treat!” or if you knew them very well the proverbial “Trick or Treat – Smell my feet – Give me something good to eat!” The people answering the door would load you down because they felt sorry for you after seeing all the other kids with full bags. I guess they thought we had got a late start. But you got more candy with an empty bag. I shared the secret with my siblings the next year and bada bing bada bang bada boom – it was a dandy candy explosion.

That year I had a Halloween haul so big that I still had candy hid under the bed at Easter (another free candy for kids holiday). I donated it all to my sister. She ate candy till she was sick. But she was smart and kept quiet about why she was sick. The next day she did it again. My parents took her to the doctor. They thought it might be a bad Easter egg. But she didn’t squeal on me. We were tight like that. We also learned a valuable lesson about moderation and something called an “expiration date”.

Having worked the system with such gusto for so long, I guess I got old and cynical early. But my plan this year is to put an EMPTY bowl out on the porch with a sign in it that says “TAKE ONE”.

Trick or Treat?
This year I choose "Trick".