Trick or treat, the bitter and the sweet...

Last night, I helped mom hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters, the town I live in ALWAYS has trick-or-treat on the Thursday before Halloween, go figure. Anyway, she had some 200 pieces of candy, and she gave them all out in about an hour.

And this year, it was actually candy! A few years ago, she had gotten these big tubs of individually sealed pretzels to hand out. I told her how horrible that was, that no kid wanted a pretzel for trick-or-treat! BUt she insisted they were healthier, which i conceded they were, but that still didn't mean that no kid wanted a pretzel for trick-or-treat. And THEN, she and dad up and went to the Poconos with friends of theirs. Meaning, I was expected to go to their house and hand out the candy (!), so it wouldn't go to waste. Grudgingly I did so, and luckily, my buddy Amie, who lived across the street from my parents, sat with me and helped hand it out. And even moreso luckily, it got dark quickly, so the kids couldn't see what I was putting in their bags. I felt horrible.

But this year, mom had those little snickers bars, and milky ways, and reese's cups and some now&laters...which she put on top to give away first, cause she didn't like them, and if there was any candy left over, she wanted it to be something she liked.

She handed out the candy, while I sat beside with Angel (aka the Poopinator) on my lap. Angel got as much attention from the kids and the candy did. And she was such a good dog too. She never growled or tried to get away, although one overly-zealous petter of a little girl did have Angel kinda shirking away from her. But the girl didn't stay long, so it was okay.

As we got nearer to the bottom, i got a little paniced. I always did whenever I handed out candy. I always feared have like 5 pieces left and a group of 7 or so would show up! What could I do? How unfair would that be to the last 2? So I kept asking mom how many we had, and when she told me she had 18 pieces left, I took Angel and went inside. I didn't want to risk being there and seeing the dissappointment on some kid's face. Mom came in a little bit later with 5 snickers bars left. There was a lull, and since that's all she had she just came in instead of risking the horrible scenario I outlined above.

Plus, handing out the candy was always dad's big thing. he loved doing it, and looked forward to it all year. Mom never really seemed all that interested in doing it. Of course, with dad really sick last year (in fact dying just three days after trick-or-treat) nobody handed anything out last year. I think mom was kinda doing it this year in honor of dad or something. And I didn't want her to do that alone. So that's why I went over as well.

It's actually been several years since I did any handing out of candy. And it was fun. The kids were by and large extremely cute and/or funny in their costumes. And it was nice for mom and I to visit.

POLT Listening to "Lucky Man" by The Verve

The bigger they are, the bigger the nerve clusters. - Robin, Robin #165