I Broke Down and Bought Actual Candy

We were almost one of those Ricola houses this year.

The sweetest trick-or-treater in the whole wide world is away at school, and I am left to reflect on all the Halloweens gone by. Many of them were cold. Some of them were too cold. And some of them had me hoarse from saying, "Say thank you, Say thank you, no honey, say thank you to the person who gave you candy."

And I'll miss being that shadowy guy in the street. The Halloween grown-up enforcer who saw to it that all the teenagers waited until after midnight to go around smashing pumpkins. The middle-aged guy in a nun's habit with a flashlight, scowling at anyone driving over 15 mph, and keeping my part of America safe.

So it would have been easy to go full cynical and buy the discount Chinese candy with the falsified lead count on the list of ingredients. Or rely on last year's candy with the addition of a few bags of Ricola to mask the moldy smell. But no. I joined the doofus parade in the candy aisle of my local supermarket - none of us making eye contact because we don't want to be asked what we're doing buying candy only 20 minutes before the kids are supposed to come.

And I paid the supermarket price for the "fun size" candy that is so small that you don't dare give less than a half dozen to each kid. I got it home and put it in a big bowl so that it would be easy to disperse when the onslaught, um, started onslaughting.

So...... where are the kids? Why are there no trick-or-treaters?