Is buying Halloween candy as daunting a proposition for anyone else as it is for me? It seems simple enough: go to the store, grab a few bags of chocolate, and toss it at the kids who show up at your door on October 31st. Child’s play. But the whole October candy free- for-all is much more complicated than it seems, people. It takes a lot of work to do it just right. Many factors come into play:
1. Demographics. Where are you living? Apartment or single family home? If you’re in a track home in the middle of suburbia on level ground, you’d better stock up. If you’re in the boonies or at the top of a steep hill, you have a little more slack. Unless of course your house appears creepy or haunted, then you have to be prepared for larger crowds, especially after 8 pm. Get the hose ready. Any chance of a busload of kids getting dropped off on your street corner (the kamikaze approach)? Those little buggers can deplete your stash in 5 minutes. Or if you’re used to small crowds but your new neighbor goes nuts setting up his $5000 haunted yard display, you could be in for a surprise when word gets out.
2. The proximity effect. It makes sense to just stock up at the beginning of the month when the candy first makes its appearance in the stores, but BEWARE! Many a horrified dieter can attest to the fact that candy in the house will sneak into your mouth completely unaware. You’re sitting there with your granola minding your own business, when WHOA all of a sudden you have a mouthful of Snickers working its way down your esophagus and settling comfortably onto your hips.
You can’t trust those chocolates, they are tricksy creatures. Trust no snack size. Some of them will tell you “Halloween candy doesn’t count”, or “If it has coconut it’s good for you,” but they LIE. Halloween candy has one goal in life and that is to be eaten, and it is relentless in its pursuit of that end. Don’t be a victim.
3. Treat selection. You may try to avoid the proximity effect by getting candy you don’t like, but it doesn’t seem to matter, does it? It only adds insult to injury when you realize not only did you consume 2000 calories worth of chocolate, but it isn’t even chocolate you like. And in my house, the stuff I don’t like (Reese’s) is my husband’s favorite, and he has managed to ferret out every single hiding place I’ve come up with. He doesn’t touch the linen closet for 10 months straight, yet all of a sudden he has the urge to get a fresh pillowcase? Mmm hmm. I think he has the place on surveillance.
Perhaps you think you can escape this by getting candy no one likes- those cheap rubber dot things that are always on sale. Or raisins. Then you have to deal with little kids crying on your doorstep or giving you disgusted looks that they wasted time trudging up your driveway only to get some cheap nasty inedible crap (though even this seems to be less egregious an offense than something *gasp* healthy. Don’t even bother.) Coolest guy on the block? My husband’s friend Kevin, who lives on a steep hill and rewarded intrepid hikers with those extra large size Hershey bars from Costco. That guy who gets TP’d without fail every year? He hands out peanuts and religious literature.
4. Amount. In an ideal world I would just get 10 bags of candy and not have to worry about it. But I do worry. I worry about my pants fitting. I can’t have gobs of leftover candy in the house to taunt me, or get stolen from the pantry by the dogs or eaten by the kids who won’t sleep for 15 days due to the sugar high. I need just enough to get through the night, no more, no less. So usually I get about 4 bags at the store on October 30th, and at 7 o clock on Halloween I freak out that I’m getting low and send my husband to the 7-11 for a few more bags. He comes back with 2 bags of Reese’s, eats one of them on the drive home, and then we don’t end up needing it anyway.
Fortunately I only have 24 more hours to worry about it. Then it’s a mad rush to get the leftovers into work and let them stalk someone else for a change, like that skinny co-worker who lives in an apartment at the top of a steep hill populated by old people. She never buys candy. Go get her, Snickers!
-jesvet
*OK, I do like candy corn actually, but it’s a nice opener so I’m leaving it.
ROTFL! This is so true. We live in a large neighborhood, but we never seem to get many trick or treaters. However, this year we have new neighbors who went all out with the spooky decor. Now, I’m not sure 2 bags will be enough. What to do, what to do?