Last night was unusual for Halloween in our neck of the woods, as for the first time ever we had over fifty trick or treaters knocking at the door, including nearly a fourth of them adults! (Most males dressed up as zombies or gangsters, and the females as Playboy Bunnies. Guess the ladies didn't hear that the NBC Series 'Playboy Club' got cancelled so those were not the costumes du jeur!) The problem was we actually ran out of candy - mainly small bags of Kit Kat bars and Snickers (2 of the first combined with 3 of the second). Thus, candy had to be rationed near the end, with one single Snickers bar dropped into each ....get this ...large pillow sack!
What's with the pillow sacks? Is this a new thing? Or as comic George Carlin once put it, "No one has informed me of this change! No one has put it into formal writing!"
Anyway, imagine the looks on the adults' faces when single Snickers bars got dropped into those ginormous pillow sacks being held about a foot wide open! But hey, something's better than nothing, right?
How did it come to this? Because of too many variable numbers year to year, and nothing ever this large. Last year for example, we had nine kids in all knocking for treats, the whole night...starting from 6.30 to 10.00 p.m. No adults in bunny costumes , as zombies or anything else. The year before we had five kids arrive, and the year before that ...NO one, as in zilch!
Never had we seen more than ten trick or treaters on a given Halloween over our 11 years at the current address. Thus, rationally, we arranged to buy a maximum of three medium bags of candy (Snickers and Kit Kats) to fill 26 small baggies, max. But very quickly, as kids kept showing up in packs (or 4 or 5) and 18 bags were taken already, I had to improvise and break out the bags of 5 bars each, now re-sorting them into 3 bars each. That meant the remaining 8 bags of 40 candy bars could now be re-sorted into 13 bags of 3 bars each, with one left over. One measly little Snickers!
But as the next hour ticked away, 11 of those 3-bar bags had now been taken, so I was left with the last resort, to break out the remaining multiplets into singles. So, from two bags of three bars each I was now left with 7 single Snickers bars to feed all the remaining ravenous ghouls stalking the neighborhood. By the time three of them went, I called out to my wife that I believed it was time for a trip up the road to the Safeway to get a Snickers re-supply.
She returned just in time to assuage a lonely kid's pleading entreaty - a kid dressed up like Michael Jackson. A kid with a bag - or pillow case if you will, at least as large as he was!
Moral of the story for future Halloweens? When in doubt have at least five times as much candy in storage as you normally would, to accommodate 5x the maximum number of ghouls that appeared in any one of the previous years! Oh, and make sure you don't eat that left over candy ....keep the supply ready to add on to next year's!
What's with the pillow sacks? Is this a new thing? Or as comic George Carlin once put it, "No one has informed me of this change! No one has put it into formal writing!"
Anyway, imagine the looks on the adults' faces when single Snickers bars got dropped into those ginormous pillow sacks being held about a foot wide open! But hey, something's better than nothing, right?
How did it come to this? Because of too many variable numbers year to year, and nothing ever this large. Last year for example, we had nine kids in all knocking for treats, the whole night...starting from 6.30 to 10.00 p.m. No adults in bunny costumes , as zombies or anything else. The year before we had five kids arrive, and the year before that ...NO one, as in zilch!
Never had we seen more than ten trick or treaters on a given Halloween over our 11 years at the current address. Thus, rationally, we arranged to buy a maximum of three medium bags of candy (Snickers and Kit Kats) to fill 26 small baggies, max. But very quickly, as kids kept showing up in packs (or 4 or 5) and 18 bags were taken already, I had to improvise and break out the bags of 5 bars each, now re-sorting them into 3 bars each. That meant the remaining 8 bags of 40 candy bars could now be re-sorted into 13 bags of 3 bars each, with one left over. One measly little Snickers!
But as the next hour ticked away, 11 of those 3-bar bags had now been taken, so I was left with the last resort, to break out the remaining multiplets into singles. So, from two bags of three bars each I was now left with 7 single Snickers bars to feed all the remaining ravenous ghouls stalking the neighborhood. By the time three of them went, I called out to my wife that I believed it was time for a trip up the road to the Safeway to get a Snickers re-supply.
She returned just in time to assuage a lonely kid's pleading entreaty - a kid dressed up like Michael Jackson. A kid with a bag - or pillow case if you will, at least as large as he was!
Moral of the story for future Halloweens? When in doubt have at least five times as much candy in storage as you normally would, to accommodate 5x the maximum number of ghouls that appeared in any one of the previous years! Oh, and make sure you don't eat that left over candy ....keep the supply ready to add on to next year's!
Just in case!
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