Friday, October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween



                One of my grandfather’s favorite sayings is, “I’m gonna do something the Devil never does, leave you.”  Keep that in mind tonight as packs of sugar filled children in various stages of costume dress roam the streets.  It’s Halloween, a time of year when kids amass, hoard, then chow down on candy with the intensity of an Olympic athlete.  When presented with a fortune of candy, a smart child will suddenly become detail oriented like a good accountant.  I know this from personal experience.  My sisters and I were  normally mild mannered Anglo-Saxon Protestants, however, after Halloween, altercations would arise over candy ownership.  We would create a hierarchy or ranking system.  The upper candy class was pretty much anything produced by Mars, Inc. The middle class included any other brand name candy.  The working class included all the anonymous, banal candy.  For example, you could trade two or three working class candies for one upper class candy.  Understanding the hierarchy helped immensely when trading.  My parents tried to break into the market.  In a feeble attempt to decrease our individual candy fortunes, our parents offered to pay a quarter per pound of candy.  We refused to sell.  Duh!!  Happy Halloween.