Halloween was last week, and you're reading this around the time of my biggest Halloween heartbreak 53 years ago. The time I learned about the Halloween Candy Tax.
I was four years old, and my parents had gotten me a Superman costume, complete with a plastic mask with the peripheral vision of a mole rat in direct sunlight. You could tell it was a Superman costume because there was a cartoon of him flying on the front, just like the real Superman had.
I got the hang of Halloween right away. I'd yell, "TRICK OR TREAT!" and thrust my bag out with an expectation bordering on entitlement, disappointed at the Scrooges who only tossed in one or two tiny bars.
"Fun size, my butt," I'd think. I was only four, so I didn't know the grown-up word.
"THANK YOU!" I'd yell because my parents were nearby, ready to confiscate any unthanked goods. Then I ran on to the next house. We only had a couple hours, and I needed to work fast. No walking! Hurry up!
My parents didn't buy candy when I was a kid, so my sister and I only scored on Halloween, Easter, and Christmas. Days like this were special, and we treasured every piece we got.
At four years old, I was rather impatient. I wanted to eat dessert first. I wanted to open all my Christmas presents at once. I wanted to peek at the end of the storybook.
But I knew better than to eat all my candy in the first few days after Halloween. Even though I still believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, I wasn't so naive as to believe my parents would buy candy whenever I asked for it.
Remember, you can't spell "whenever" without "never."
A few days after Halloween, I came home from pre-school all excited because I had one piece of candy left, and I had been looking forward to it all day.
It was a Mary Jane, the chewy candy made with peanut butter and molasses. It wasn't the greatest, but it was sweet, and I was jonesing for it. I had left it in a stainless steel bowl in a cupboard.
I went to retrieve it, but the bowl was gone!
Vanished! Missing! Lost! Disappeared!
Which meant anything inside the bowl was gone!
"What are you doing?" my mom called from the other room.
"Where's my last piece of candy?" I called, fighting to keep the quaver out of my voice. Maybe she had put it somewhere for safekeeping. Like my bedroom. Or a bank vault.
"I don't know, ask Daddy."
I found my dad taking a nap. I climbed onto the bed, hoping he could tell me about my candy or at least the vault combination.
"Daddy, where's my candy?"
"I ate it," he said, not even opening his eyes. He just lay there, all calm and relaxed after his criminal confession.
"But that was my last piece!" I shouted.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know."
How could he not know? It was in a stainless steel mixing bowl that had previously contained my stash! How else would it have gotten there? Did the Candy Fairy just show up, dragging a bowl of candy behind her?
No! I earned every bit, tromping from house to house, listening to people ask, "Who are you?" and fighting the urge to shout, "I'm Superman! Can't you see him flying on my stupid costume?"
I had savored every bite, eating the best ones first and saving the worst ones for last. Impatient four-year-old, remember?
And now, just a few days after Halloween, it was all gone. Mary Janes may be one of the worst kinds of candy, second only to Christmas ribbon candy, but it was still candy.
"But I wanted it," I whined over and over.
"I'm sorry, honey," my dad said. "It's gone."
"Then get me another," I said, not unreasonably.
"No," he said, unwilling to drive a mile to the nearest store to buy me a piece of two-cent candy.
Selfish.
That was my introduction to the candy tax. It was 53 years ago, and I'm still a little salty about it.
Every dad and mom charges candy tax, even though the moms deny doing it. (We all know better.) It's just the way the world works — the kids go out and do all the hard work while the parents profit off their efforts. That's capitalism in a nutshell.
And it taught me an important lesson in my own kids' Halloween efforts: Take your candy tax on the first day so they won't notice anything missing.
Photo credit: Swirling Thoughts (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)
Brent Moore (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.