The last food group - Chocolate

This morning I woke to an empty bowl at the front door. Last night, the bowl held some of my favourite Halloween chocolates that I bought (supposedly) for the little scavengers on our street. In truth, I had hoped that I'd be snacking on some right now as I post this blog - but it is not so. I could blame it on the high number of kids that rang our door bell last night or my husband who handed them out, but the reason for the empty bowl goes back to those Halloweens when I was a trick-or-treater...
As a child, Halloween was definitely one of my favourite times of the year. When my brother and I got home from our night raid, we always dumped out our candy so our Mom could take a picture. I have absolutely no idea why she did this. I can only speculate that she wanted to one day show what greedy kids we were, or perhaps she wanted to document our progress from year to year. I don't know.
After spreading out my candy on the floor (far enough from my brother so that there was no chance of our treats getting mixed up) I would count and sort it into different piles. There were piles for chocolate, for suckers, chips, rockets (we always got lots of those), gum, and of course, toffee. Oh the toffee, in its Halloween coloured rapper. I always tried to convince my brother that two toffees were definitely worth one chocolate bar and that he would be crazy not to trade with me. Sometimes,it even worked. I guess in some ways, it was Halloween that taught me how to manipulate my little brother. I guess it affected me in other ways, too...
Halloween candy made me a little obsessive, at least until it was gone. For instance, when it came time to eat my smarties, I would open the box and divide them into piles by colours. I would then perform a complete inventory of the number of smarties in each pile. If there were more red than blue, I would eat the red ones to even out their numbers. This would then be followed by either eating one of each colour to keep the piles even or - if I really wanted a good mouthful of chocolate - one of each colour all at the same time. Somehow I convinced myself that each colour tasted just a little different and that the colour combinations mattered.
This logic would also apply to the pile as a whole. If there were more suckers than chocolate bars, I would use this as justification for eating 5 suckers that day to even out the piles. This would ultimately lead to even piles - but very few candies left. Once the piles dwindled down to single digits I'd think that it was probably best to just get rid of it so that I didn't go insane trying to keep from eating it - and I would eat the rest in one sitting. That's why my loot never lasted very long.
And so it was those Halloween's that came to influence the person that I am today and, if I'm completely honest, the reason why the candy bowl at the front door is empty this morning. Maybe next year we'll only have one type of chocolate, so that I'm not tempted to even out the piles. Then again, as I think back over the enjoyment that all of those little chocolate bars gave me, maybe not...