Is that all there is ... to Halloween?

OK, we're wrapping up Halloween around here, because my kids get tired of Trick or Treating really early. They give it about an hour and then want to get home and start eating their candy.

Why is it that the idea of staying out late and filling huge shopping bags full of candy doesn't appeal to my kids? When I was a kid I lived for Halloween. I wasn't going to get another significant supply of candy until Easter. There was some candy in my Christmas stocking, but nothing to get excited about. No, Halloween was pretty much it. Everyone knew where the really good houses were. Like this guy, Mr. Burns, who lived across the street. He always had full-sized candy bars. We thought of him as the demi-god of confectionery.

My kids are such lightweights.

And my brother and sister thought I was a total wuss about Trick or Treating. They would go out for four or five hours and literally go for miles, coming home around 9:30 or 10:00 with two shopping bags of candy. They would faint dead away if they saw my kids in action.

I must be spoiling my kids. Candy isn't special enough. This must stop. My children are being robbed of their childhoods. First they come up with a chicken pox vaccination, then they start giving kids candy every time they turn around. It's in goodie bags at birthday parties, class parties, supermarkets, at the speech therapist's office--whatever.

I think That Stud Muffin I Married and I need to move to a crummy shack somewhere and make our parents sleep in the same bed. And my husband needs to lose his job, and I need to make watery cabbage soup for dinner. And our kids should get one candy bar a year--on their birthdays.

Yeah, that's the ticket. Then they'd appreciate a piece of candy.




Plus maybe I'd get to meet Johnny Depp.

--P