Kandy Karma Part 1

Note: this is the 1st installment of the Kandy Karma saga. If you have already read this, please feel free to skip to Parts 2 & 3.

Free candy?

Socially-sanctioned dress-up playtime?

No age restrictions?

On it’s face, Halloween seems like a deal too good to be true.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from attempting to be my own ----- boss is that everything costs something. Everything. Let’s not be naive here. Halloween surely isn’t somehow a miraculous exception to this.

So…what is the true price of Halloween? And, ninja, please, don’t answer with “your soul.”

The Good E’en before All Hallows Day seems to always find a way to bite those who partake firmly in the ass. Perhaps that should be expected, given that it is essentially an exercise in sacreligion?¹It’s a weak pun. Get it? Sack, as in the sack of candy in which you collect your treasure. Nevertheless, we persist.

Typically the Revenge of H is in the form of sugar-induced bellyaches and premature trips to the dentist for the kiddos, while later in life, it is often run-of-the-mill hangovers and the realization that there is almost assuredly photographic evidence of your cross-dressing²See: Exhibit A (if only it were the only one…). escapades–you just don’t know who has said evidence.

You know, regrettable-but-mostly-forgettable type stuff.

Every now and then, though, like a razor-blade stuck in a free apple, the pain cuts a little deeper and gets stuck in your throat…

The Fall of 1990 found my mom, my brother 1SkinnyJ, aka 1SJ, and myself in our second year of a grand adventure living in Springfield, Missouri.³See also: A Most Excellent Life Lesson. The previous year, we had moved there from dusty-ass Kansas so Mom could work towards a degree at Baptist Bible College.

I would posit that the hallmark of this “adventure” was that our lives were All Things Jesus throughout our time there.

Church. School. College. Sunday mornings. Sunday evenings. For some ----- reason, Saturday mornings.

And, Wednesday evenings.

Not only did we have a mandatory church service on Wednesday evenings, we usually had to go to Awanas Club⁶For the curious: https://www.awana.org/us-curriculum/elementary/tt/ beforehand. If you’re not familiar with Awanas, it’s basically just Boy/Girl Scouts having a love-child with a Sunday School teacher.

That year I was in 4th grade and 1SJ was in 6th, so, unfortunately, we both were involuntarily committed to Awanas. Inconvenient in general, but nothing more burdensome than all the other time-sucks from that period in our lives.

Now, the previous year, in 1989, our church, ye ol’ Baptist Temple, though eschewing all things of the devil, was kind enough to host a Fall Festival to give us sanctified children an alternative to the pagan rituals being performed in the Outside World. Despite it being indoors, it had all the other trappings of Trick-or-Treating. Namely, a shit-ton of candy.

In 1990, however, the stars misaligned and ----- us all over.

Just take a good look at Figure 2 and tell me why this particular October is more terrifying than any other October.

You are indeed correct: the winning answer is, “But if Awanas and church already have Wednesdays booked, then how–? But what about–? But, candy…BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CANDY!?!”

For some reason the pricks at Baptist Temple just decided to have Awanas and church as normal, and pretend like nothing fun was happening outside. And we wonder from whence arises religion’s reputation of being a bunch of sadists. Better call Robert Stack, cuz it’s a real Unsolved Mystery.

Anyways, this calendaric catastrophe was further compounded by the fact that Mom was a bit of an expert in health-nuttery, so us boys were sugar-deprived the whole time we lived with her. So it wasn’t like we had any other decent sources of sweetness–just whatever we could acquire on holidays.

Halloween was to us what Valentine’s Day is to a florist: all the action only really happens one day out of the year.⁷I’ll refrain from deriving any humor out of this phrase in the context of marriage…

Now I don’t remember who’s idea it was–1SJ‘s on account of him being the Lead Instigator, as per usual, or mine as I’m a born problem-solver–but it being 1990, we could not let that aggression stand…man.⁸https://youtu.be/KjdKAYBbeZk

Our plan was fairly simple: ditch Awanas for a quick round of Trick-or-Treating, then make it back to church for the regular service. No problem, right?

Well, it wasn’t that simple. First, we had no transportation. Fortunately, that was no problem, since we lived a couple of blocks from church so we would be just fine being on foot.

The real quandary was procuring costumes. We had zero resources for acquiring anything, yet we had too much pride to go as a couple of poor-ass kids.

Though a few years my elder, 1SJ and I pretty much looked the same age most of our shared childhood. Even more importantly, we looked like a pair of kids straight outta Children of the Corn.⁹In retrospect, that’s probably what we should have said we were, but I’m not sure we were aware of that cultural reference at that age.

Wait a second–my fact-checker is trying to get my attention.

[Please hold…]

J.K. Kidding–it turns out I’ve been citing the wrong movie most of my life. Village of the Damned is the right movie.

Regardless of which movie we looked like we were out of, the best we could come up with was to go as “twins,” though in the moment we thought it was only slightly less lame than the default, going as Children of the Thrift Store.

So, while we didn’t have any proper equipment at all, what we did have was the sheer will to get our share of the sugars. Channelling our inner MacGyvers, we rustled up a couple of dark turtlenecks and a few paper grocery bags. It was game time, baby.

As dusk fell, we pretended to head off to Awanas, and after screwing around for 15 minutes or so, back-tracked to the house to get our gear.

It was time to hit the neighborhood.

And hit it we did.

While we feared that we might even be denied goodies for not having good enough costumes, it turns our that going as twins worked 20x better than we could have imagined. In the 10 or so instances when we were asked what we were, almost every time our answer “twins” was met with incredulity–no one could believe that we weren’t twins for real!

We raced from house to house, trying to squeeze every ounce of the precious minutes before we had to get back in time for the regular church service. Despite having a very narrow window of opportunity, we sure the hell got our lack-of-money’s worth.

We rushed back to the house to drop off our illicit goods before scurrying back over to the church, without Mom being any the wiser–we had pulled off the Great Confectionary Heist of 1990 without getting our butts busted!

Later that night, we took inventory and realized that we had made bank on the night. Sweet, sweet bank.

Each grocery bag was well over half full. Now remember, these were paper grocery bags, so it was quite the haul. We would be set until almost Thanksgiving.

On our thieving honor, we promised the other to discretely stash the goods in our nightstands and only dig into them when Mom was out of the house. She must never find out, lest she rob of us our spoils and administer a pair o’ whoopins.

In the end, religion and socio-economic status weren’t enough to hold these bad boyz down. We had planned and executed the perfect crime and got away with it. So yeah…life was good.

I mean, hell, the Universe was literally making it rain candy down on us.

I guess it’s as they say, “the sun’s gotta shine on the dog’s ass every now and then!”

Oh, and remember how I mentioned “All Things Jesus“? I came across this bit o’ internet gold¹¹Source:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/187040190747083190/ when I was verifying that I had my “dog’s ass” idioms straight:

Who says there isn’t a Cosmic Force with a sense of humor?

To be continued…

Content created on: 23 October 2019 (Wednesday)

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