Halloween is the first of the great American candy holidays. My kids have been excited about it for weeks, and they came home tonight with two buttloads of candy...seriously, the biggest bowl we had only held half of it. Our three biggest bowls are now filled to the brim. I have no idea how we will eat this much...I think I got about a tenth of this much candy when I was a kid and it made me fat. Good thing we parcel it out a bit more than was the case when I was a kid. If we can keep them (and me) from sneaking it, this candy might last us six months.
As for me, though...I'm done with Halloween. The cheap superhero costumes, the diabetic-inducing excess, the endless parties that waste yet another day of the kids' schoolyear (and then destroy any sense of discipline for a few weeks as the kids come down from a sugar high)...I really don't want to do this anymore. What on earth turned a day in honor of the dead into raving children banging on doors demanding candy? It's not cute, it's Trumpian in its deplorability. I'm ready for it to go away completely. It won't, of course. Nor will the pounds that are put on again from all the high fructose corn syrup.
Forget taxing cigarettes or banning drugs...why aren't we doing more about this health nightmare? I really would love to hear Michelle Obama talking about the virtues of giving out celery sticks and apples, but then I would also have to sit through endless fat pasty white Republicans talking about how unAmerican she is, even as they moan and gripe about how terrible our country has become. And then I'd want to go and drive my car into a tree.
Now excuse me as I grumpily go and swipe a Kit Kat.
