{"id":1337,"date":"2011-11-01T09:08:23","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T16:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/?p=1337"},"modified":"2011-11-01T09:08:23","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T16:08:23","slug":"the-morning-after-candy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2011\/11\/01\/1337\/","title":{"rendered":"The Morning After Candy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By A.J. Llewellyn<\/div>\n
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Growing up in Australia, I grew up without the benefit of Halloween. To us back then, it was one of those holidays we envied as kids since anything that involved getting loads of sweets was a fantastic thing. I had cousins here who lived on their Halloween hauls for weeks…<\/div>\n
Perhaps those years of deprivation have caught up with me because I am now obsessed with candy.<\/div>\n
Last night I went trick-or-treating for the first time ever. I escorted my friends’ kids around the block and really got an eyeful, as the saying goes.<\/div>\n
Since I moved her in 1984, I’ve largely ignored Halloween. I am still hurt that my beloved black cat, Winnie was stolen from my backyard two days before Halloween that year. I still think about her and hope her demise was not as shocking and grim as my mind insists it was. I had no idea people did such disgusting things. I’ve never let a cat of mine outdoors for any reason ever since. Whoever took that beautiful animal knew me and knew I had her. She never ventured out front….<\/div>\n
See, I torture myself still.<\/div>\n
It’s taken a lot for me to semi-embrace Halloween. We Australians still think it’s all pretty bizarre but what I saw last night made me realize just\u00a0how<\/em> bizarre. I saw families wielding baby buggies up and down neighborhoods they don’t live in, just to grab free sweets.<\/div>\n
I saw kids in great costumes and kids in lame costumes. I saw kids whose parents had no money for costumes, but still took them out prowling for candy. I pitied these kids because they felt the need to protect their parents when people questioned their lack of a guise and believe me, they do.<\/div>\n
“Who are you supposed to be?” I heard over and over again…<\/div>\n
“A little kid,” one girl said defensively.<\/div>\n
I don’t care how poor you are, even a sheet thrown over the kid and claiming him to be a ghost is better than\u00a0nothing<\/em>. Just my humble opinion.<\/div>\n
I saw a woman balancing her kid and his plastic orange jack-o-lantern in one hand and a can of pest spray in the other.<\/div>\n
“Is that part of his costume?” I asked her.<\/div>\n
“No,” she replied. “Somebody sent me an email saying this is the best self-defense tool a woman can carry. Spray this stuff in somebody’s eyes and they’ll regret every trying something.”<\/div>\n
Oookay, then. Nice way to approach a total stranger asking for free stuff…<\/div>\n
I was astounded at the pushiness of people, the rudeness when parents felt that homeowners were being Scrooges by handing out only one or two pieces of candy. I thought this was just…unreal.<\/div>\n
I saw people trick-or-treating late into the night, hammering on doors of homes where it was obvious the occupants were done for the night.<\/div>\n
Where was it written that the world owes these people candy?<\/div>\n
I thought about this last night as I watched the new episode of\u00a0Hawaii Five-O.<\/em> In the opening seen Danny Williams takes his daughter trick-or-treating around the seedy hotel where he’s staying (really??) and when one guy opens his door and insists -twice – that he has no candy, Danny gets aggressive.<\/div>\n
“Get her some candy, man,” he says, then acts irate when the guy caves in, slopes off to the kitchen and comes back with mini-bottles of booze and plunks them into the kid’s candy bucket.<\/div>\n
What the hell did he expect?<\/div>\n
I saw this behavior over and over again last night. People grading the size and quality of candy. Griping over bubblegum not being an acceptable candy…<\/div>\n
What?!<\/em><\/div>\n
It’s funny that at the annual Gay Halloween Parade in WeHo last night, the predominant theme was the government’s greed.<\/div>\n
We are all guilty of this, my friends. Even on an individual scale. I saw adults act like spoiled children over little pieces of candy, setting a very bad example for their kids.<\/div>\n
We want, we want, we want. And, we expect.\u00a0Wah wah wah wah wah..<\/em>.<\/div>\n
I like candy as much as the next person, perhaps more. I don’t think I am any closer to adoring Halloween than I ever have been, but at least I do know it hasn’t and never will turn me into somebody I would be ashamed to be…the morning after candy.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Aloha oe,<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A.J.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By A.J. Llewellyn Growing up in Australia, I grew up without the benefit of Halloween. To us back then, it was one of those holidays we envied as kids since anything that involved getting loads of sweets was a fantastic thing. I had cousins here who lived on their Halloween hauls for weeks… Perhaps those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[16,196,197,198],"class_list":["post-1337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-and-restaurants","category-life","tag-a-j-llewellyn","tag-halloween","tag-the-morning-after-candy","tag-trick-or-treat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1338,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions\/1338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}