Sweet seasonal dilemma
It’s the day after Halloween, and I’m faced with the dilemma of the leftover candy bars. (Although I’m writing this the morning of Halloween, I can pretty much predict that I’ll have candy lurking here Friday morning.)
Remember the days of Halloween night in a neighborhood that’s busy with kids? When my own children were young we would have a hundred or more kids at the door – so many that on the warmest Halloweens I would sit on the front steps with my bowl to avoid all the ringing of the doorbell, and to take in all the festivities.
Now, I live in a neighborhood that doesn’t have many kids. Last year my doorbell rang exactly once; I answered to find a little witch and her mom standing farther down the sidewalk. When the little girl opened her sack I tossed in at least 10 little candy bars, because I knew she was probably the last one.
Without kids on the street – alas, without kids in the house – Halloween isn’t much around here. While the rest of the world was planning costumes and putting tall skeletons in their front yards, I was watching it all go by. Finally on Wednesday I went to the store to buy candy, just in case.
Growing up in Finleyville, we lived on a dead-end street with a lot of kids. One year, we ran out of candy and I found our dad at the kitchen table, stringing 10 pennies between scotch tape to drop into bags. Closing the door and turning off the porch lights was not an option.
My neighborhood now doesn’t have that kind of energy, and so I’m left with an almost-whole bag of candy. What do I do with it? It will lurk there like an open invitation to indulge. Get hungry at mid-day? Have one or two. Need a snack for the movie? I’ll wander out to the kitchen. In fact, as I write this I can imagine where that bag of chocolate will be: in the bottom drawer to the right of the stove, where I keep the stale marshmallows. That’s also where I keep the bag of sad, dry rice cakes, which are the exact opposite of Halloween candy.
It’s not that I can’t treat myself to a fun-size candy bar. One never hurt anyone. But it’s in the multiplicity that the trouble starts. Even hidden, they will be flirting with me.
I could use the suggestions that lurk around this holiday every year: donate the leftovers to a food bank; chop up the chocolate and use it for Christmas baking. Or, put the candy in the freezer; that never works because is there anything as satisfying as a cold chocolate bar eaten with a cup of hot coffee?
“Get candy you don’t like,” is another suggestion. The crunch bars are the ones I don’t really like, and I’ll be haunted by them anyway. If we were talking about Sour Patch kids or red Twizzlers, this would be a different column, about my eating all of it before Halloween even began and then having to return to the store to buy more.
The best thing that can happen, for the neighborhood and for my blood sugar, is to have lots and lots of kids knocking on the door. I’m now just hours away from dark, and I have about 30 little candy bars that are standing by. A dozen goblins or super heroes or princesses – that’s all I ask. And failing that, then one or two little witches who will walk away with extras in their bags.
That still leaves a couple of treats for me.