Bad Neighbors

John has never handed out candy to his neighbords on Halloween. He tells me he usually turns out all the lights and goes to the basement to watch TV. Since we are now married and living in what was his house, John decided this year that we could do the domestic thing of handing out candy to the little munchkins who came knocking on our door. Since John never gave out candy before, we did not know how many kids we would get. We figured five giant-sized bags of candy from Target should cover us for the evening. We were wrong. We live in a townhouse community with many other young families, and we ran out of candy in 45 minutes. In fact, we ran out in the midde of a group of kids, and we ended up having to give out granola bars to the rest of the kids in the group. We then turned out our lights, but people kept coming. I told John we could start handing out instant oatmeal packs, but instead we fled to his parents' house to escape the madness. Even though we gave out five bags of candy, I was very embarrassed that we ran out before the end of the festivities. To all those families who came later, we look like cheap, unspirited neighbors. Next year, we will have to get at least 12 bags if we're going to make it through the evening.