Trick or Treat

According to the bible of original thinkers, Pinterest, more candy is sold at Halloween than any other time of the year beating out Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day.

Halloween was once an innocent holiday when children dressed in costumes that could be found around their house. An old flannel shirt and floppy hat probably owned by their father became a hobo outfit. A thread-bare white sheet with two holes cut out hopefully in the right places for the eyes and you were a ghost. And if you could talk your mother into breaking her last dollar bill at the five and ten store, you could get one of those horrible, hot masks.

Children would roam their own neighborhoods with a paper bag, knocking on the door and screaming, “Trick or Treat.” Of course, we would never give those stingy neighbors a trick, well, maybe once. Toilet paper was really cheap back then.

As most adults know, Halloween is not just for kids anymore. Millions are spent by adults on costumes. Some wear them just to sit on their porch and pass out candy, but many get in their cars dressed as a cat or a pirate and go to parties. Once I saw a mummy pumping gas.

Also, and try to notice this, candy is usually on the lower shelves at the grocery store during the rest of the year enticing the shorter, younger population, but at Halloween there are aisles of candy and on all shelves. This is no accident.

Adults can pretend they are buying all that candy for the kids who will visit their houses, but in reality, adults are buying that candy for themselves. What soothes the soul more than a extra large bag of bite-size chocolate candy? Somehow you’re only gonna eat one and then when you awake from a sugar coma you find yourself lying in a pile of empty wrappers.

Have a fun time kids, whatever age!