Ellis Harman is copy desk chief at The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette.Happy day after Halloween, y’all! Now please tell me you’ll eat some of this candy.
Last year, I woefully underestimated how much candy it would take to satisfy the ghouls and goblins who roamed the streets. After three emergency trips to Target to purchase what I (mistakenly, it turns out) thought was enough chocolate to give the entire eastern seaboard diabetes, I finally just turned off all the lights in the house and sat on the couch in the dark, trying really, really hard to ignore the indignant voices of the kids outside demanding candy.
I thought a dark house was the universal Halloween sign for “nobody’s home, go bother someone else for sweets,” but that’s not the case. Take a hint, kids: If no one comes to the door the first six times you ring the bell<2009>... it’s just not going to happen. But kudos on your perseverance, I guess.
This year, I’m ready. I stocked up at Costco during a recent trip (is this a good time to ask why we don’t have a Costco here? Because I wonder that. All the time).
Serio I brought home five monster bags of candy, each stuffed with 300 pieces of Halloween goodness. For the mathematically challenged, that’s 1,500 mini bags of M&M’s, Twix, Snickers and Hershey bars.
I was prepared. Bring it, witches and pirates and random teenagers who are maybe a little too old to be trick-or-treating, don’t you think? I’ve got my A game and my candy bowl. So what if I didn’t actually carve the pumpkin this year? I’ve got approximately 600 Kit Kats!
Unfortunately, I was so hopped up on a virtual sugar high that I didn’t take into consideration what I like to call “the snack factor.” For example, when you’re baking cookies, you should always bake a few more than you’ll actually need because you’re going to accidentally eat some of them. Hey, it happens. We’re only human.
I might have opened one of those giant bags of candy more than a week ago. And I might have absent-mindedly eaten my way through about half of it. And then I might have kept snacking and very nearly finished it off.
Look, there are only like six M&M’s in one of those fun-size bags. A girl’s going to need more than six M&M’s to make it through the day, OK? Stop judging me, ghosts of Halloweens past!
So Wednesday morning I had to stop at Target to pick up a backup bag of treats — and on Halloween, the pickings are a little slim. And in my defense, you picky little monsters — I thought kids LIKED little boxes of raisins. They’re nature’s snack food!
Halloween — and, honestly, all holidays in general — really stress me out.
What if the kids who come to the door don’t like my selection of goodies? Is it rude to tell someone to take just one piece of candy? What if some kid takes a big old handful and I have to tell him to put some back? What if someone out there has got a peanut allergy and I accidentally give him or her a Snickers? What if kids really don’t like raisins and they TP my house in protest?
It’s just too much pressure! Even though I was prepared this year, I predict there will be plenty of Halloweens in the future when I’ll be sitting on the couch in the dark, hiding from trick-or-treaters.