Cute column in the Wall Street Journal asking the really important question: should your house be the house on the block that gives out regular-sized candy bars rather than miniatures?
Everybody who has ever thrown on a costume and gone trick-or-treating has a story about a Big Candy Bar House. It usually goes something like this: It was the end of the night. We’d knocked on every door in the neighborhood but one. When they opened it, we couldn’t believe our eyes: actual-size Kit Kats.
Big Candy Bar Houses become legendary, almost mythological, their locations closely shared among children and parents, like the House That Only Has Mounds, the Smug Dentist Who Gives Out Floss and the Beloved Neighbor Who Pours Wine Into Plastic Cups for Mom and Dad.
Is being a Big Candy Bar House show-offy, like building a basketball court and lazy river in your backyard?
My children are eager to join the list. We moved not long ago, and they’re looking to make a splash. I get it: Becoming a Big Candy Bar House would be a quick way to endear themselves to the local kids. They’ll go to school the next day as overnight celebrities. They’ll run for Student President on a Big Candy Bar ticket. They’ll be in the Yearbook as Most Likely to Hand Out Big Candy Bars. They’ll go to a good college and probably become doctors or Dentists Who Give Out Floss.
Conversely, if we give out a lousy treat—say, butterscotch menthol throat lozenges or Washington Commanders tickets—the kids will never live it down. They’ll be shunned on the playground. They’ll bumble through life and wind up working as newspaper columnists.
I feel fortunate to live in a blue-collar neighborhood, thus the parents where I live are easy marks for whatever Fox News-induced candy-and-abduction scare is being pushed by that network each Halloween season. Thus, almost no trick-or-treaters in my area.
All hail rainbow fentanyl!
It may not really be a thing, but stories about it save me from having to decide whether to give out big candy bars or not.
