Full Size

With white pillow cases, we would run amok. Sure, the parents were present, but they strolled slowly, chatting, keeping barely-an-eye on our advance. Our street was long, but closed to cross-traffic, and littered with many many children.

Young kids, older kids and teens, decked out in 70's sensibilities, running door to door, slinging swollen sacks.

This was before the sensational stories. Before fear of razorblades and demon cults. Before Amber alerts. Really, before helmet laws and seat belt citations.

Back when the world was perfect, or apparently so, to a 7-year-old on a quest for free candy.

And then, at the end of the journey, after my friends had gone back to their own houses, before I had to go to bed, we would sort the loot. My sister, who was much smaller, and I would dump our collective bounty into a pile, and the parents and grandparents would pilfer through for favorites.

My mother was obsessed with the Abba Zabba. My dad made for the Milky way. I horded the SweetTarts, Smarties and anything else of a hard-and-sour nature.

But then, even after an epic Halloween haul, there was always the dud. The crap. The waste of precious trick-or-treating time. These were the plastic-wrapped carrot sticks, JuJu Bees, Bit-o-Honeys, Pennies and (worst of all) religious tracts.

Every year. Every goddamn year, some religious weirdo would sneak the mini-gospel into my sacred sack of goodies. I'd watch for it, but never saw it. They were good. The sneaky power of the Lord was with them. And for me to call THEM religious weirdos was really something, considering where I came from...

But I digress.

Look, as a parent, I now understand the internal motivation to hand out nutritious snacks, or helpful-seeming tracts, on Halloween. However, those things are just not fun. they are like getting socks for Christmas. It's not like the kids go begging door-to-door for candy every night. It's only once per year. And the whole point, at least these days, is to have fun.

And so, with that in mind, I have always been a big giver on Halloween; although, the relative swarm of ghouls and witches varies. The missus, who makes the costumes by hand, takes the tots door-to-door, and she gets to revel, to a reasonable degree, in the oohing and the awing.

I, on the other hand, man the door and hand out the candy to the other kids. It's the system, and it works.

So, to the store I went, late this evening, to fetch the goods to give away tomorrow (tonight, as you read this). I quickly grabbed three bags of cheap chocolate crap, when suddenly, my eye caught a hefty looking box. The box was wrapped in cellophane and priced to move. Still though, the box alone cost about 4 times as much as one of the bags.

Whereas, the bags contained bite-size mini candies, the box was full of full-sized candy bars. Snickers. Milky way. Baby Ruth. Reeses Peanut Butter cups. Kit Kats...

Full Size!

And so, I dropped the cheap-ass bags and grabbed two boxes.

Why? Because a whole bunch of kids will get a few fleeting moments of glee, when they sort through their sad sacks of bite-sized crap, and they come across an actual full-sized candy bar! That's why!

Will it save the world? No.
Will fix the economy? No.
Will it end the war? No.

But it will maximize the fun for the families that live in my neighborhood. And on Halloween night, that is the entire point.