{"id":196,"date":"2013-11-07T06:35:53","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T14:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=196"},"modified":"2018-07-25T19:33:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T02:33:56","slug":"halloween-candy-mare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=196","title":{"rendered":"How to Avoid a Halloween Candy-mare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Candy-mare\"<\/a><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

When I bought my house, the realtor told me to stock up on candy.\u00a0 She said the next street over really went all out<\/i> on Halloween.\u00a0 \u201cStock up on candy\u201d turned out to be code for, \u201cCash out your 401K and hire a former Army Supply Sergeant to coordinate candy distribution logistics.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My new neighborhood turned out to be Ground Zero for trick or treating.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span> I don\u2019t know what drives a person to take the time, effort and expense to stage a full horror show complete with severed limbs and Zombies in his front yard.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it, people who go turbocharged nuts for Halloween are a little off.\u00a0 They\u2019re whacked.\u00a0 A piece of their brain is missing.\u00a0 And the odds of a dozen of these people end up living on the same block is astronomical.\u00a0 Think DNA identification testing error.\u00a0 Of course, what probably happened is that one weirdo moved in and then infected his neighbors.\u00a0 His neighbors being people who happened to lack self-esteem and might otherwise have gone off camping with a Jimmy Jones type in Guyana who promised a refreshing Kool-Aid spritzer after they got the tents set up.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We have kids who live in the neighborhood.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t have two million kids.\u00a0 Parents actually bus these rascals in.\u00a0 Beginning just before dusk, a convoy of 1986 Dodge Caravans driven by chain-smoking moms in moo-moos arrive and unload their precious cargo of running noses.<\/span> This year, Halloween nearly killed me.\u00a0 I had been nursing a lower back strain and getting up and down every 30 to 90 seconds was really aggravating it.\u00a0 To make matters worse, and yes it shames me to say this, I had recorded an episode of Nashville that I was trying to watch.\u00a0 (Don\u2019t judge me \u2013 you\u2019re no better!)\u00a0 It took me an hour to get through the first ten minutes of the program.\u00a0 The interruptions were incessant.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take a rocket scientist to follow an episode of Nashville, but I was losing track.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier in the evening, a friend of mine who I\u2019ll refer to as \u201cTim,\u201d because his name is Tim, posted the following warning on his Facebook page: \u201cAny child caught trespassing on my lawn tonight will be shackled, beaten and hung from the basketball hoop in my driveway!\u201d\u00a0 I found it more than honorable of Tim to broadcast fair warning via the worldwide web, though I paused to wonder what percentage of five to eleven year olds were likely to check their Facebook updates given their near total insane focus of collecting as much free candy as possible prior to their mother calling \u201ctime\u201d from the Caravan.\u00a0 Tim later added the comment that next year he planned to install strategically placed punji stick pits throughout his front yard.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now that another festive Halloween has passed, let me offer a few brief guidelines for next year\u2019s celebration:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Wear a costume.\u00a0 I\u2019m happy to hand out candy to anyone between the ages of fetus and 110, but wear a costume.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m a babysitter.\u00a0 I\u2019m babysitting these other kids.\u201d No.<\/li>\n
  2. Open your bag.\u00a0 I\u2019m handing out free candy here folks.\u00a0 I\u2019m not your manservant or your valet.\u00a0 Don\u2019t just stick you bag out; open it up.<\/li>\n
  3. If you\u2019re an adult in street clothes accompanying a child, don\u2019t stick out a bag after I\u2019ve put candy in your kid\u2019s bag.\u00a0 There are two kinds of pathetic.\u00a0 There is regular pathetic, and then there\u2019s the overweight adult with no costume begging for candy pathetic.\u00a0 (Listen to me here, folks.\u00a0 These are nuggets.)<\/li>\n
  4. If you\u2019re trick or treating in Tim\u2019s neighborhood, you might consider staying on the walkways.<\/i>\u00a0 On this note, I have something shameful to confess.\u00a0 When Tim recently posted a question on Facebook asking where he could purchase dry bamboo to make punji sticks, my \u201cbuy local and sustainable\u201d instincts kicked in, and I suggested that straight-grained Douglas fir should work just as effectively.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Well, I need to go now.\u00a0 One of the Dodge Caravans broke down in my driveway last night, and I told the owner I would jumpstart her battery.<\/span><\/p>\n

    _______<\/p>\n

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    ______________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Also-<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Check out these great books:<\/p>\n

    The Lawyer\u2019s Song: Navigating the legal wilderness<\/em><\/strong> at \u2013<\/p>\n

    https:\/\/buff.ly\/2K41Tax<\/p>\n

    Seven Rules for the College Playground –<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    https:\/\/buff.ly\/2IqXxgn<\/p>\n

    Seven Secrets You Need to Know to Hire the Right Lawyer –<\/strong><\/p>\n

    https:\/\/buff.ly\/2roFIov<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When I bought my house, the realtor told me to stock up on candy.\u00a0 She said the next street over really went all out on Halloween.\u00a0 \u201cStock up on candy\u201d turned out to be code for, \u201cCash out your 401K and hire a former Army Supply Sergeant to coordinate candy distribution logistics.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My new neighborhood […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[113,112,115,116,117,110,106,109,111,43,114,107,108],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-caravan","tag-dodge","tag-douglas-fir","tag-facebook","tag-ground-zero","tag-guyana","tag-halloween","tag-jimmy-jones","tag-kool-aid","tag-nashville","tag-punji-sticks","tag-trick-or-treat","tag-zombies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1413,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/1413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}