white rabbit halloween

for halloween this year, we were a little lackluster about getting candy to hand out to kids.

first, i'll just say that halloween in boston's south end isn't the neighborhood candy bonanza of my youth. at the age of 10 or so, when i still lived in florida, i remember having to head home halfway through the night in order to get another brown paper grocery bag, because my other one was already full of sweets. my brother and i would return home and spend what felt like hours doing a marathon candy swap, an event only slightly less contentious than most trade union negotiations.

now in boston, ann and i pass out candy to a small handful of kids who brave the streets of mostly darkened windows looking for the few lit ones. you'd think the kids were mormon missionaries* the way our neighbors hide. the first year i lived here - before i knew the deal - i sat on the outside stoop at sunset with a full bowl of candy looking up and down the street for the hordes of kids that i knew MUST be coming at some point. after a couple of years of getting jacked up on sugar and waiting around fruitlessly for the costume parade, i've resigned myself to the fact that halloween here isn't what it was in my subdivision of talahassee. most kids don't even dress up. in a group of three, only one younger kid will have a plastic mask on. the other two will just stand there in their regular clothes, then open their backpacks to receive the candy.

for this reason, i only grabbed a bag of white rabbit while at super 88 yesterday afternoon. i can only imagine what the kids thought when they got home and saw chinese candy in their plastic pumpkins.

* or cookie man for you fans of noah baumbach's "kicking and screaming"