They’re sitting there. Just outside my office door. Two steps beyond, in a pantry/utility closet. Three bags of Halloween Candy. They’re calling me. “We have chocolate. And caramel. And nougat (whatever that is). And did we mention chocolate?”
We’re two weeks away from Halloween. And those three bags aren’t likely to make it into the neighborhood kids’ hands. And that’s because my self-control in the face of chocolate is smaller than a bikini on a dancer in a David Lee Roth video.
The problem with Halloween candy is timing. If you wait too long to buy, you end up with all the lousy candy that makes the neighborhood kids want to come back and toilet paper your house. If you get it too early, you end up eating it yourself.
My wife is susceptible too. Not as bad as me, but some of my weakness has rubbed off on her. We both find wrappers from mini-Butterfingers, mini-Snickers, etc. around the house. We pretend we don’t see them, less we’re called out by the other person for the wrappers we ourselves might have dropped somewhere.
The real winner is our dog. Every time someone goes to that closet, he’s watching. And to buy his silence, a carrot must be paid to Gizmo. Of course, you’re reading this thinking, why don’t YOU just eat the carrot? And to that I say, do you have any idea how many times I’ve written the Hershey and Mars candy companies imploring them to dip vegetables in chocolate? They don’t even take my calls anymore! I would high-five the Jolly Green Giant every day if his peas were triple-dipped in chocolate and coated in sea salt.
But alas, vegetables remain largely without chocolate coatings and Halloween candy remains only two steps outside my office door. I can hear the mini-Twix calling my name. “Just one to hold you over until lunch.”
And by lunch, there will probably be a half dozen of the mini wrappers cluttering up my desk and serving witness to my shameful lack of self-control.
And by next week, I’ll be headed to CVS to buy what’s left of the bad candy and telling myself I’ll work off all the chocolate calories getting the toilet paper out of the trees.
Carry on, Citizens!
