A big bag of tricks with little treats

I dread the day all year long.

In the weeks before, my anxiety grows. In the days before, I start bargaining with God (if You get me out of this one, I’ll…). The day before, I consider hiding in my closet. The day of, my heart races through the minutes, and I’m willing to pay someone, anyone thousands of dollars to take my place. By the time the first doorbell rings, I’m sweating and in a near stutter and have been rehearsing a mantra all day long: “You can do this, you can do this.” And when I finally open the door, I’m greeted by a gaggle of little monsters screaming at me. It’s all downhill from there.

No, I’m not talking about having my family over on my birthday, although the aforementioned description applies. I’m talking about Halloween. I’m talking about trick-or-treaters. The tradition terrifies me now that I’m on the flipside of it.

I should start off by saying that I like kids. I really like kids, and I get along well with them, despite that I think I offended my 3-year-old neighbor about a dozen times this year and snubbed my 7-year-old neighbor last winter, an action that did not go unpunished (he filled one of my garbage cans with snow immediately after the snubbing—I can’t say blamed him).

But I rather loath the idea of trick-or-treating. If you pay attention, it’s a rather tense and uncomfortable situation for all involved—parents, kids, homeowners alike. Forget about the more serious threats like poison candy or kidnapping and move on to plain social anxieties involved in adult-child interactions. These are the ones I’m talking about.

We all love choice. Choice is freedom. Too much choice is a kind of prison, though, one that snags kids at your doorstep and, days before, keeps you pacing candy aisles like you lost your marbles, employing numerous modes of mathematics all at once (how many kids, how many pieces, how many calories, price per piece, price per ounce, price per package, add tax, divide by inflation, factor in inclement weather, and it all adds up to you being swindled for a few m&ms).

The first kids that rang my bell were a baseball player and his sister Sleeping Beauty. Since we weren’t sure we’d have enough candy to last I told the kids, in a pleasant grown-up voice, “Take one each.”

The baseball player gave a strong eye roll, apparently displeased with the candy limit, looked at me, and said, “It’s free candy, you know.”
Is it now?

I cried foul and told the kid to take a walk.

A bear rang my bell next and had absolutely no problem with choice at all. In one motion and in a split second, the bear snatched a Fun Size Snickers from the candy bowl and put it in his mouth, wrapper and all. Mamma bear had to wrench it from his teeth, while I tried settling the situation down with an uncomfortable joke that landed humorless on my doormat.

Last year, I watched a car pull up right in front of my house at the onset of the evening before (Walking Dead reference, here) the Walkers came out. A nicely dressed, young mom and dad popped out of the car, and, after a minute fussing in the back seat, extracted a baby all of about 8 months old. Baby in mom’s arms, they took him around back, opened the trunk. The entire family seemed to disappear inside the trunk and emerged a few minutes later. The baby was gone, replaced by wriggling pumpkin. My doorbell rang. I opened the door, and mom and dad excitedly said, “Trick or treat.” The baby/pumpkin was half-sleeping/half-drooling in mom’s arms while she made a gangly attempt at holding out a little sack, operating the baby’s arms like a puppet. They weren’t fooling anyone. The candy was for mom and dad.

Another reason I don’t like Halloween is my dog. She dresses up every day of her life as The Hound from Hell but becomes especially active whenever our doorbell rings. She becomes downright evil when her competitors take food from the house. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Tell me about it. Every piece of candy taken from this house is a little knife in my dog’s side, and she kicks, barks, claws, snarls, loses her composure (which is thin as is) throughout All Hallows’ Eve.

I’m business owner, and although my business acumen is not very strong (I’m more of a creative mind), I have a tendency to measure things in profit and loss. Since my wife and I don’t have any kids yet, we run in the red on Halloween because we don’t have little collectors scaring up the neighborhood for candy to replenish the stock we bought and handed out. At the end of the evening our only gains are in calories from the candy left for us to eat.

---

---