eat the Whole Damn Bag....

Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have

 as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold.

Judith Oriney

I grew up living in a small town and I loved Halloween.  I couldn't wait.  Sometimes it would be too cold or rainy and we wouldn't get to go.  Sometimes we'd have store bought outfits and sometimes we'd (my sister and I) would dress in an assortment of things we found around the house, piece patched Halloween costumes that were often the best. My brother was always too small to tag along with us.  We'd get our plastic pumpkins and mama and daddy would take us to town to go from door to door.  It wasn't that we lived in the country...there just wasn't any houses to "trick or treat" and town...well town was actually less than a mile away but when your a kid waiting to rake in a booty--well a mile away is along way away.   Mama was one of those over protective mama's.   She'd walk along side us, tell us not to run ahead and heaven forbid if you ever tried to sneak a piece of candy before she did her detective candy sort where any item--no matter how much I loved it--any item with the least bit of unwrapping or crushing or tearing went into the trash---you never know what kind of people there are in the world---someone just might poison a child.  The greatest fear was the of course finding a razor blade inside--so all fruits and all homemade items immediately went into the trash.

I'd lay on my stomach on the hard wood floor and sort and plot what and how many I'd eat first...my favorite was the chocolate malted milk balls...I'd gobble them up.  After the sort, my sister and I would trade....laying out all the things we'd part with for something in each other's piles.  Mama and Daddy they always got the peanut butter logs, the Mary Jane's and the black licorice.

At our house, off color daughter always loved to collect her candy...but off color son...even when he was three and four was always more concerned with staying warm, the candy in the house and what the score on the football game might be.  

I remember one Halloween night when a friend and I were taking our children around the block....before we even had been to ten house, off color son begged me to take him home because the Cowboys were playing on TV....that was when he was five.

Big Daddy....he loves Halloween and I think he probably goes through a bit of grieving every holiday now that the kids are big.

They used to rake and rig and make the yard the spookiest in the neighborhood.  They would hang ghosts that would glide down a rope at just the right moment and have a way to make it happen over and over.  The graves in the yard would have the children of the neighborhoods names---I always expected some irate mother or father to appear at our door...but it never happened. The coolest was the hand buried beneath the leaves on the grave that jumped up to scare people just as they reached inside the pumpkin on the grave to get their candy.  Big Daddy would have fishing line attached to a shovel and at just the right moment...he'd yank it and scare the be-jebbers out of some poor pre-teen.  He would dress in his striped pajama's black jacket, paint his face, put in his jacked up teeth and suddenly Big Daddy would become beetle juice for a day.

Halloween really was one of the more sacred holidays at our house.

Now...off color children go their own way leaving me and Big Daddy to fight over who has to hand out the candy.  Big Daddy will be on his own tonight because I have plans and I did note that he didn't buy any delicious candy but kind of gross stuff...but that will be on him.  I hope he has fun and if nothing else has a moment of remembering all the fun we've had in the past.

Life is short.

Halloween's come but once a year...

Go on out,

buy your favorite candy

and 

sit under a blanket,

crack the window 

and

go ahead...

eat the whole damn bag.

Nobody will know...

and if you have to call in sick tomorrow...

oh well..

a bag of candy can make one sick.

Have a great night....

I hope your night is filled 

with 

a lot of treats...

and if you are lucky...

really lucky...

perhaps a few tricks.

Happy Halloween!!!

The radical rambler