OH NO! NOT THE GOOD CANDY!

There is a legend in our family that I am stingy about Halloween candy. Sam says one year I bagged up cereal! (I do not remember this and think he dreamed it).

Brian always says I don’t buy enough. I think that myth dates to the first year we were married, 37 years ago, when we ran out and had to go buy more. But run out and buy more we did. I don’t think we’ve been short since.

In fact, the opposite is true. And that's exactly why we should not buy the most delicious candy.

In our hands, tiny bags of M & Ms are nothing if not gateway sweets to full-sized Reece Cups or even Jumbo Hershey Bars. Brian and I do not need candy. In fact, we need to avoid candy. That means we shouldn’t be entrusted with a bowl brimming with 160 small bars of Snickers! We should hand out Skittles or Three Muskateers or Milky Ways. Those, I can turn down.

But no, Brian picked out the best stuff.

If there are leftovers, and there will be, we need to immediately stash them somewhere like the trunk or the crawl space, somewhere that requires effort and a contemplative walk of shame to reach.

I was gone to a conference most of yesterday and today and didn’t figure I’d get home until the little goblins had come and gone. So I told Brian, weeks ago, that I was giving him more than two-weeks' notice that I had resigned from handing out candy this year. Turns out I got home early, but my resignation from these duties remains in effect. It’s all him.

I’ll be in the tub.

I remember a few unusual Halloweens. Years ago, Brian and I visited Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Ill. on this day. One year we transferred my father-in-law’s nursing home residency. A few years ago my brother and sister-in-law Tim and Jeannie Jobe and I went to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center on this date.

There were years I took the kids around locally. One of my favorite pictures of the boys is when they dressed up as Batman and Robin.

Then there was the year I married Bradley Rigsby. Bradley and I were in first grade and rode the school bus together. I was a bride that year, and I guess Bradley wanted to be a groom because we got hitched. On the bus. Gee, this must be our 51st wedding anniversary. Too bad he moved away after first grade.

Many years I went trick-or-treating with my relatives Mike, Lisa and Marlene. A couple of years, Barbara Earl and I created a haunted house in our basement and invited in the neighbor kids. We loved to scare them with things like eyeball grapes and spaghetti brains.

I have a memory of getting full-sized candy bars – Hershey Bars as memory serves – in Philomath. Apparently they got so few treaters that they went big for the local kids they knew. I always think of Philomath when I think of Halloween.

When I was very small, I attended the Halloween party in the Brownsville Gymnasium, long since burnt down. I remember Perry Floyd dressed as a clown. He scared me and I cried. Maybe that’s why I don’t care for clowns today. Perry was a nice man -- as long as he didn’t look like a clown.

It’s time to turn on the porch light and sequester the dog. I will tell Brian to unload those M & Ms first. They need to be gone when I emerge from my bath.