I did a bit of research before writing this Halloween column, and what I discovered out there scared me. Children who go trick-or-treating Saturday night will have a new type of "treat" to fear even more than dried fruit: Organic candy.
It claims to be all-natural, not harmful to the environment and guaranteed to taste like … Well, actually, the advertisements don’t mention anything about taste.
I couldn’t find the words "gooey," "melts-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hands" or "guaranteed to satisfy" anywhere in the ads.
We didn’t have to worry about scary treats like that back in the 1970s. When I was a kid, we were warned to look out for razor blades in apples and psychedelic drugs in baked treats.
But now we must face the horror of organic candy. Gone are the days when anything that might be healthy was so obvious we would never have mistaken it for candy.
It went in the "reject" pile immediately.
From the looks of some of the organic candy, it could pass right under a child’s radar and end up in the "maybe" pile. That’s where my real fear comes in because in the days after Halloween, I’m the one sneaking treats from the maybe pile.
The maybe pile is where we put the goodies that no one wants to eat right away but we "may be" able to swap for something better. After all the best candy has been eaten, there "may be" something in that pile that starts to look appealing.
Both the reject and maybe piles have steadily shrunk as my kids advance in age. The best years for me were when we lived in California and they were around the ages of 4, 7 and 9.
All three of them were too young to appreciate anything with nuts. I dutifully claimed all their Snickers, Mars bars and Hershey’s with almonds the moment they dumped their treats out on the living room floor.
I can only imagine how things may have changed in southern California now that organic candy is so readily available and just a mouse-click away. It scares me just to think about it.
After California, the two Halloweens we spent in Pennsylvania were sweet and full of chocolate, thanks to our proximity to Hershey. The boys had bigger appetites by then, and Tommy started holding onto his Snickers, but I still made out pretty well.
This year, I will be lucky to get a bite-sized anything. Jimmy and Tommy don’t go trick-or-treating and will beat me to anything Ronnie doesn’t hide away from us that first night.
Unfortunately for Ronnie, he usually hides things so well that he forgets about them until six months later; I’m expecting to find his Easter basket any day now.
I could probably get the most out of this year’s chance to benefit from our neighbors’ generosity by convincing Tommy to go trick-or-treating one last time. But I would have to come up with a really good costume to hide the fact that he’s 13.
I don’t know if I’m up to creating something that convincing this year; we’ll have to see how desperate I become as the weekend gets closer.
If I do manage to make Tommy look like a giant 10-year-old instead of a greedy teen, he’ll probably come home with a bag of organic candy. I guess it would serve me right.
A mother of three boys, Pam Zich has been married to a Marine for 18 years and currently lives in Springfield, Va. You may e-mail her at homefront@stripes.osd.mil or visit her Web site at www.lifeonthehomefront.com.