Smell My Feet

Halloween's coming up. I bet you're thinking about what slutty outfit to wear to your party, or at least how you can get away with wearing a costume that's not overdone, but something that people can clearly tell you at least tried. What could be worse than going to a Halloween party where the other guests really aren't sure whether what you're wearing is truly a get-up, or you're just an awful dresser. I mean, seriously...I've had teachers who are so badly dressed you want to know what holiday they're dressed up for, but then you realize...that's just their "blue outfit" that they purchased in East Berlin before the wall was torn down.
What I really want to get to here though, is not about Halloween parties. It's about the nostalgia I have about trick-or-treating.
What kind of trick-or-treater were you? Beth and I were the only professional trick-or-treaters I have ever known. Every year from 7th grade to 11th grade, we went trick-or-treating. Not to casually peruse the neighborhood, or show off our costumes. But to collect candy like it was our JOB. We learned that pillow cases are indeed the best bag to collect candy in, and that running from door to door was the only way to get more candy than the year before. And how did we know which year was the most successful? Duh! We weighed the bags when we got home!
What next? We'd spread it all out on the carpet, trade things we didn't want, throw out the stuff we knew we'd never eat (those nasty orange peanuts and those nasty peanut butter pieces of crap wrapped in either orange or black wrappers). Then we'd make piles of things that were similar in either constitution or desirability. Then we'd stash it in a secret place, taking out a few choice pieces for lunch every day. Of course, this is not a comprehensive documentation of all the nuances and distinctions we had about candy hoarding. That all will have to go somewhere else. But I will let you in on one final secret: I still have some candy saved from the last time we went trick-or-treating together. It hasn't gotten moldy, been discovered by pests, rotted, or started stinking. In fact, the only things in that cache are things with a twinkie-like composition, meaning they don't go bad, they petrify. (Incidentally, I recently told this story to some coworkers, and they suggested that I take some of this candy and send it to beth as a gift).
I wonder how Halloween fits into other peoples' memories. It's a collective experience we all share, yet I feel that everyone must have had a unique experience somewhere along the way. Do share!