THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511020201
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 09 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: BY ANNE SAITA
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Trick or treating was shortlived at my house this Halloween.
Unable to both chaperone my own little tricksters and dish out candy, I foolishly left a bowl full of four bags of chocolates and lollipops in a chair on my front porch. A note taped to the chair read: ``Please help yourself to 1 or 2 pieces.''
I even colored the ``please'' in red to underscore my plea for charity among the ghosts, clowns, Power Rangers and Pocahontases sure to stop for a treat.
I knew there would be some who disregarded the note and grabbed a handful of candy. The temptation would be too great.
But I had forgotten that Halloween is no time to test the honor system, especially among kids whose parents abandoned them in my middle-class Elizabeth City neighborhood for a couple of hours.
My daughters and I hadn't even gotten around the block when a band of appropriately dressed hoodlums started hooting. They'd hit the jackpot, and my stomach churned as I quickly surmised where the shouts were coming from.
By the time I returned to our porch, the bandits and every last Milky Way and York Peppermint Patty were gone.
The suckers had disappeared, too, except for the one holding an empty Tupperware container and trying to explain to children coming up to the door that we were already - less than five minutes into the holiday routine - turning out the porch light.
That's the signal suburbanites give to let kids know our household was either tapped out or not participating.
Later that evening, still sour from the ordeal, I related my woes to friends and family. Most seemed as surprised at my naivete as I was at the theft.
``What did you expect? They're kids,'' my friend Annie told me.
I'd expected the candy to last through at least the first half-hour. I expected more youngsters to be accompanied by adults at that hour. I apparently expected too much.
Later, in a telephone call to my teacher-sister, I began to bellow about the inhumanity of it all. She, too, told me I had asked for it.
I can see their point. The Halloween tradition, one I have reluctantly ``bought into'' all these years, never evoked a high sense of morality.
Still, knowing I'd let down the children in my neighborhood and, worse, that teenagers might later retaliate for my presumed inhospitality, didn't assuage my sadness.
Sure enough, I woke from a fitful sleep to find my neighbor's pumpkin shattered in our yard.
By then I was starting to feel a little better about the previous evening's incident.
I realized that if those kids ate even a fraction of the candy I'd provided, they'd soon feel, as I had, sick to their stomachs. MEMO: Anne Saita is a staff writer for The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB