MF'ing Trick or Treaters!!!

Image by Foxtongue.

I’ve lost some faith in the kids in our neighborhood.  On Halloween, we are out trick- or-treating with our own kids, and so leave a bowl of candy at our front door. We live on the outskirts of the more dense and lucrative trick or treating grounds, and get only five or six kids at best.  I, however, put out enough candy for fifty.

Most of the years that we have done this, there is candy left in the bowl when we come home.  This year was different.  Every last stick of candy was gone.  It was obvious that some kid came along, saw an opportunity, and seized it.  All of it!  I have been wrestling with my disappointment over this action ever since. 

What quality or character within this particular child or group of children made this okay?  Did they not pause to consider the next kid who might come by?  Was there no internal compass that directed him that this might be wrong or that cleaning us out was not how our system was intended to work?  He was not happy with enough or a little extra, this greedy little trick-or-treater , took all he could get away with simply because he could.  What was the difference between the child who took an appropriate amount of candy from the bowl and the one who took it all?

Some might argue I was asking for it.  Why wouldn’t the kid take all the candy that was there?   So easily accessible, how foolish was I to have left out our candy without protection or controlled distribution.   Would not have most opportunistic, trick-or-treaters, done the same?  After all, wasn’t the point of Halloween to fill your bag with as much candy as possible?  Candy is the currency of youth!  This fortunate and resourceful individual had simply capitalized on a windfall opportunity to rapidly increase his confectionary stash.  With very little effort he had surpassed his evenings’ haul… at one stop!

Others might agree that there is some moral obligation associated with deciding how much candy one ought to take.  Should not the child have been appreciative that there was candy available, take only what was reasonably fair, and leave the rest for someone else?  Imagine the sad little faces of the kids who came later and the bowl was empty.   I could completely understand the taking of a few extra pieces as a reasonable way to take advantage of the situation.  I am sure that fellow had been at many a doorway, calling “Trick-or-treat” and been handed only one, lousy piece of candy. 

Perhaps this was the reason for his excess.  Candy was distributed many different ways and the quality of candy varied from house to house.  At some houses, candy was dispersed in a tightly controlled manner.  One or two pieces were given by the homeowner, and the selection was random, perhaps with this child receiving something he didn’t like, like a crappy bag of pretzels for instance.   At other houses, the bowl of goodies was held out to him, and he was able to choose whichever kind he wanted, but the homeowner would quickly stop him from taking more than one or two pieces.   This type of regulation required him to work more houses and risk getting things he didn’t want.

In an ideal world, he would have open access to each house’s candy and be able to take as much of exactly what he wants.  Were this type of opportunity made available to each trick-or-treater, each house would quickly run out of candy.  If all of the kids got wind of this, a frenzied candy grab might ensue, whereby each child would target a home, be the first there, and quickly plunder the candy holdings.   Halloween trick-or-treating would be over in moments, with an unequal distribution of Halloween wealth.  The open marketed, unregulated candy bowl, runs the risk of being completely depleted by the few who lack the guiding principle obliging them to consider the consequences of their actions on others with the same desire.   The redistribution of candy wealth in such a system would quickly result in a vast sweets disparity and Halloween as we know it would break down, perhaps even collapse.

The faster more aggressive kids would get candy, whereas the younger, slower kids would get none.  More clever kids could even formulate elaborate plans to insure that they had first and unfair access to the candy bowls.  Getting all they can when they can, is the underlying desire of all trick-or-treaters, but some act on it, and some don’t.

Perhaps this is a winner take all mentality.  Is the failure to take all of the candy a sign of weakness or, similarly, is taking all of it when the opportunity presents itself, a sign of strength? Is it akin to a Halloween demonstration of the survival of the fittest or of the one most willing to do whatever it takes to meet their end goal: to have the most candy?  

How will I handle this next year?  Will I take the chance and put the bowl out again?  Will I put a sign out, reminding each child of the expectation that they take only what is fair?  After all, they have demonstrated that without regulation, they will act in a manner that results in unfair candy access and candy inequity.  Most homeowners know this, and so closely regulate how their candy is dispersed, to insure that these resources are spread evenly over the trick-or-treating population.  To put it simply, they control candy wealth in the neighborhood to make sure each child has access to the same opportunities and therefore the same amount of candy.

To save myself the brain damage, perhaps I won’t put out any candy at all next year.