Halloween is a matter of willpower in our household.
A friend of ours once said to me, “I don’t know how you do it. If I bought that much candy that early, I’d be out in the store on October 30th buying Halloween candy again. Possibly not for the first time.”
I like to plan ahead. Especially for big events. Around here, Halloween is a Big Event. It’s not so much that all the houses are decked out with Halloween-themed bric-a-brac (though there are certainly houses on this street that go all out). It’s just that there’s a lot of Halloween traffic in our neighborhood.
The first year we came up, our new neighbors explicitly came over one day to warn us.
“Halloween is kind of a high-volume event around here.”
“How so?” we asked.
“During a bad year you can expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 people during the course of the evening. And that’s a really bad year. Expect somewhere between 200 and 300.”
Up until that year, my wife and I had been living in apartments that, though certainly family friendly, did not really create a lot of Halloween traffic. Our previous best was 30 trick-or-treaters in one night.
Sure enough the first year we saw about 250 people at our front door. Last year we passed 300.
So now we’re onto our third year. And I’ve had 700 pieces of candy in my household for several weeks now, stashed away in our pantry. Not a single piece has been sampled.
Not one. Not by me. Not by my EXTREMELY pregnant wife.
Not…one.
Sheer willpower. Nothing less.
