Dave Barry's Halloween column from 1996: Night Of The Living Chocolate

This bit reminds me of various Free Range Kids (here's their archive of Halloween articles) posts on ludicrous Halloween-related parental fears:

The irony, of course, is that there ARE no hordes of trick-or-treaters, not any more. We in the news media make darned sure of that. Every year we publish dozens of helpful consumer-advice articles, cheerfully reminding parents of the dangers posed by traffic, perverts, poisoned candy, and many other Halloween hazards that parents would never think of if we didn't remind them ("Have fun, but remember that this year more than 17,000 Americans will die bobbing for apples").

The result is that many children aren't allowed to go trick-or-treating, and the ones who ARE allowed out come to your house no later than 4:30 p.m., wearing reflective tape on their Power Rangers costumes and trailed at close range by their parents, who watch you suspiciously and regard whatever candy you hand out as though it were unsolicited mail from the Unabomber.

And this bit reminds me of me:

So for most of Halloween, your doorbell is quiet. This means that you pass the long night alone, hour after hour, just you and the miniature candy bars. After a while they start calling seductively to you from their bowl in their squeaky little voices. "Hey, Big Boy!" they call. "We're going to waste over here!"

As the evening wears on they become increasingly brazen. Eventually they crawl across the floor, climb up your body, unwrap themselves and force themselves bodily into your mouth. There's no use hiding in the bathroom, because they'll just crawl under the door and tie you up with dental floss and threaten to squeeze toothpaste in your eye unless you eat them. At least that's what they do to me. By the end of the night my blood has the same sugar content as Yoo-Hoo.

Read the whole thing, and if you're looking for kids' books for Christmas, Mr. Barry's Peter and the Starcatchers series has been a hit with my grandkids - I started buying them a few years ago and get new ones as they come out, and they get passed from kid to kid.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2008/10/31/v-fullstory/1845331/night-of-the-living-chocolate.html#storylink=cpy