Evaluate Your Candy
Figure out your resources, quantify them, figure out how to use them to your best advantage. Remember your best resource is often YOU, your values, or sometimes, something you have access to.
If you follow me on Twitter this story might sound familiar.
I grew up in New Hampshire. Halloween was a big deal to me, for many reasons. Halloween closed out my birthday month. The trees had been turning gorgeous colors, leaves were falling. The air had lost its humidity and was delightfully crisp. My neopagan family celebrated Samhain, which was a lot of things - the death of the old year, the birth of the new year, a time to honor our ancestors, and one of my favorite rituals due to the beauty of it.
Also, there were costumes and trick-or-treating.
Note: for the purposes of this post I went looking for photos of me from childhood Halloweens. I found nothing, so you’re just getting some of my grown-up costumes.
Here’s me as Cruella de Vil this year & me as Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas a prior year. Here’s a silly video of me as Cruella de Vil this year and how I walked up to everyone at a party (where I won first place in the costume contest!)
Back to 90s New England in October…
It was pretty much always cold on Halloween. I was pretty much always a witch, as it was easy to layer long underwear and pants under a voluminous witch skirt, and layer long sleeves and long sweaters and a long velvet cape in a sufficiently warm way while still looking on brand (as a baby goth, I had dramatic black skirts & capes year round).
I had an interesting relationship with the candy part of trick-or-treating though.
For context - I ate lots of healthy food as a child. My mother is a fantastic cook and I ate delicious and nutritious meals. My favorite food as a child and now? Artichokes! I was insanely underweight for my age (for example, I was an average height 8-year-old weighing ~35 lbs), but I ate pretty well. I did have a sweet tooth, about which my pediatrician shrugged and said “get her as many calories as possible”, and my mother’s parenting style was to give me all the access until I found moderation myself. So we had a candy cabinet. Year round.
At 36, I still have a major sweet tooth. However it’s generally satisfied by a small taste of something. Two oreos, or a spoonful of ice cream is my frequent dessert. I like sweet - in small portions.
So, about this candy cabinet — It was a source of a certain amount of neighborhood popularity for me. I think we used to go to Costco roughly once a month, and my mother would let me choose a candy in bulk to supply our candy cabinet.
I liked variety, and tracked my inventory.
I remember doing this from literally age 6 to my mid-late teens. One of my quirks has always been a bit of obsessive compulsive organization. I like to sort things. I like taking from things evenly. I have to balance the flavors on a plate.
When I go to the movies or go on a long road trip, I get a chocolate sweet (usually Junior Mints), a “fruity” sweet (often Twizzlers), and something salty/savory (popcorn or pistachios or chips). I alternate flavors, and I never finish any of it.
Anyway, back to Halloween —
Halloween was not particularly special in terms of candy access - except for its ability to diversify my candy cabinet inventory very quickly.
On Halloween, I’d walk or bike the neighborhood with family & friends (depending on age) and end up with a ton of candy. Which I would bring home and lay out on the living room floor. I’d sort them by type.
Milky Ways vs KitKats vs Twix vs Dots vs Twizzlers vs Good & Plentys vs Skittles.
I’d place them in sections, “chocolate” vs “fruity sweets” vs “savories” (pretzels, raisins, etc). I’d make note of really novel appearances of Candy Buttons, Lifesavers, or Neccos.
I would make a literal inventory list on a sheet of paper of my quantities of each, organized by preference.
Then, I’d invite some of the neighborhood kits to do the same, and after creating inventory tallies I’d ask for kids to rate the candy types. If you had 12 types of candy, rate your preferences 1-12. I’d watch for patterns and trade for my preferences, and facilitate trades between kids with strong preferences for opposites.
I went through a phase of hating peanut butter & chocolate but loving Dots, so I’d trade with the kid who loved Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups but didn’t value Dots. I always kept some Reese’s though - those were always money to some kid.
I’d then work on evening out my candy inventory to maximize my own variety, while upselling the candy I didn’t like to others. Kids without frequent candy access were often thrilled to take a higher quantity of a less appealing candy and give me things that I valued, even when they valued them too. TEN Good n Plenty’s for only THREE Snickers? They were in.
I didn’t eat much candy on Halloween. I’d just add it to my candy cabinet. I had variety at my fingertips whenever I wanted, and a new supply for trades.
My best “customers” were kids whose parents didn’t like them having candy. I noted their favorites in the lists on Halloween and kept inventory of those year round - “he likes Reeses and he has PlayStation, good to know”.
Three jumbo pixie sticks could earn me hours of time on Super NES. I had to beat Donkey Kong Country. We only had original NES and Sega Master System at home (eventually I got an N64). The neighbors had Super NES and Playstation.
I traded candy for Magic the Gathering cards, cassette tapes & CDs, video game use (or literal ownership), even a pair of rollerblades once. I’d want to play on my neighbor’s giant trampoline but they didn’t want to? Could a KitKat change their mind?
ALSO cable access. My family was a computer and books family (we had a second phone line for internet and I had my own AOL account at age 8). No cable TV. We got two staticky channels (ABC 9 & WNDS 50) but sometimes I wanted to see TRL on MTV. The other kids had it, and I could score invites for TV watching with candy.
Don’t get me wrong - I had actual friends who liked me for me with or without the candy. However, candy became a very useful currency when charm & persuasion didn’t work, or I wanted something crazy. It buttered kids up. It also deterred bullies.
An older kid would make fun of my weird name or weird religion. Other kids might start to join in, and I’d remind them who had candy. The teasing would stop.
I wanted help building a snow fort or a jump on the sledding hill? Older boys were wicked helpful, for some candy.
It was pretty ridiculous in retrospect. But it taught me a lot about how people can change their behavior for something they value.
Candy as a currency certainly shifted out of value as things like actual money and actual expenses grew in focus (no, my friend wouldn’t take Twix in exchange for a ride to the mall), but I think back on that, my silly little candy cabinet, my inventory lists, rating my friends’ preferences for future reference - and I still like to figure these sorts of value adds out in my life.
I recognize that I have incredible resources - my mind, my talents and skills, my experiences, my ways of connecting with people (and therefore connections to people), that I am always trying to find ways to collect and trade in pro-social mutually beneficial ways. I could write many blogs about this. I may be advising a friend writing a book about this. My “candy cabinet” is diverse and full.
So, basically, this is my long seasonally relevant story to tell you how I became a capitalist.
Happy Halloween!