My Brilliant Halloween Idea

I became a vegetarian shortly after our son Josh was born and during his formative years I was pretty vigilant about what he ate.  (And by "pretty vigilant" I mean "fanatically zealous.") 

His first couple of Halloweens were not an issue because he was still little but by the time his third Halloween rolled around, there was a problem.  I was strongly against the idea of him gobbling up his weight in sugary junk (as I called candy back in the day), but I didn't want to deny him the fun that comes with dressing up in costume.

"Hmm....How to get around receiving massive amounts of candy without branding my child as a social outcast for life?" That was the question.  I mulled it over and over in my mind until I was struck with a brilliant idea! I would go in advance everywhere I would be taking him trick-or-treating and drop off a healthy snack for them to put in his bag.  This was creativity at its finest!  He'd have all the fun and none of the cavities!

And so it happened.  That Halloween and the two that followed it, Josh got tangerines, apples, oranges, bananas, popcorn and even the occasional fruit leather in his trick-or-treat pumpkin.  Everyone got to see how adorable he looked in his costumes and he got to see what all the other kids wore, too.  He got a kick out of the whole evening and seemed genuinely pleased with his healthy haul. (That's how it looked to me anyway.)

Fast forward to kindergarten.  Halloween approached but even then I didn't realize that I hadn't thought this idea through to its logical conclusion.  I had totally ignored the friend factor.  When Josh found out that all the other kids got candy when they went trick-or-treating, he had a melt down.  Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were nothing compared to this!  Josh was beyond angry.  He was livid. 

To this very day, if you mention Halloween to him, he will zero in his pre-school years and get annoyed all over again.  In his mind, I still owe him about a hundred pounds of nerds, starbursts and skittles.

Sometimes brilliant ideas are best left alone.

Shortcuts

Ever taken a short-cut home?  Once in grade school I took one with my friend Marcia McVey.  Marcia's dad was a minister and they lived in the parsonage next to the church in the center of our tiny town. 

We walked through the school parking lot, into an alleyway then squirmed through a little hole in the fence and ended up in her backyard.  It was a cool adventure and a true shortcut -- if you were Marcia.  I, however, was not.  (She had poker-straight blonde hair that fell to the middle of her back in kindergarten.  We were only five.  How did she grow hair that long in just five years?  Even then, I remember asking myself that question.  Kind of a funny thing for a kindergartner to think about, but I was that kind of kid.

Sweet, wispy haired kid

This story is not about Marcia's hair -- although it could be, the hair was that pretty.  I mean, it's been fifty-four years since I was in kindergarten.  I'm even not sure of the spelling of her first name any more, yet I still vividly remember the hair that the girl had.  When she hung upside down on the trapeze* on the playground, her hair touched the ground.  That was a big, big thing with the kindergarten set, especially those of us with wispy hair that barely grazed our shoulders.)

*No kidding, this tiny town in Michigan had a trapeze bar on the playground.  Why?  Who knows?  But cool though, right?

Back to the shortcut story:

Not only was I not Marcia (I feel I've firmly established that by this point in my narrative) I also did not live on that side of town and so I had to walk myself all the way back around the block, pass the school, then take my normal route home.  It wasn't such a shortcut for me.  No, it was actually the opposite of a shortcut, really.  It took much, much longer to get home that day than normal and when I did get home I was in hot water.  (Duh.)

I've been feeling like I've been taking a lot of those kind of shortcuts lately,  whenever I use Jerry's old GPS, to be exact.  I swear, that GPS tries to get me to drive to Marcia's house before it takes me home every time I use it.