Halloween, The Great Equalizer

Well, dear readers, Halloween is here once again. It’s the time of year that apparently allows nice girls to dress like prostitutes and all the sugar-obsessed ADD kids run from door to door dressed up as this year’s version of the Power Ranger. As I pondered on the strange holiday that we call Halloween, I was blessed with a whole new perspective on its purpose. Halloween is the great equalizer among children. Our nation is full of little fatty-fats who waddle to school, hate recess because it means they have to walk outside to play Gameboy, and sweat when they eat. The heat generated by the friction between their legs when they wear corduroys could power a small city and may also be responsible for the fires in California.

As you well know, the highlight of every kid’s Halloween experience is trick-or-treating. This is where the epiphany took place. When you enter any public school, you will notice that there is a fairly obvious distinction between your average kid and the kids with obese parents. As a child, I always played sports and was fairly active. When the last day in October rolled around, I remember running as fast as my little legs would carry me so as to get as much candy for myself to gorge upon as possible. Some years, I would come home with pounds and pounds of candy. I would sit on my floor for hours, separating the candy into piles and categories. I would have a Hershey’s pile, a Reeses pile and then a pile of the nasty candy that I would try to trade away to my younger, naive siblings who, for some reason always believed that quantity was better than quality (suckers). The crappy candy pile included (but was not limited to) the orange, peanut shaped marshmallows, anything with black licorice or raisins, generic brand suckers, any and all fruit, toothbrushes and just about anything that was made at home. I never stopped, however, to consider the success of the fat kids. Logically, Halloween is every fat kid’s favorite holiday. It’s also very likely that it’s the only day of the year that these kids have to physically exert themselves in any way for sugar. I’m sure that after about half a block, most are so tuckered out that they want to turn around and head back. The will to stock up on sweets carries them forward around the rest of the block, as they sweat mayonnaise and cooking oil. It is very unlikely, however, that they will ever accrue enough sugary comestibles to equal the normal children. The exercise (if it can be called exercise) they get from the trick-or-treating may be somewhat suitable to help compensate for the future sugar intake. On the other hand, all the normal kids who ran for hours from door to door with their pillowcases slung over their shoulders (sometimes hitting the good houses twice) have close to double the candy which, technically, should help cancel out any of the benefits from their cardiovascular round-the-block workout. All in all, Halloween is for making normal kids fat and fat kids fatter. What a great nation we belong to.

Enjoy this video about Halloween and kids by none other than Mr. Seinfeld himself.

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