Most years, we haven’t been home for Halloween. Last year, we were in Greece, touring the ruins of the world’s first democracy while the death knell for Earth’s most recent democracy was sounding. (Call that dramatic, I don’t care. Have you met me?) We live on a lane that’s off the beaten path and doesn’t get much traffic unless you live here or are delivering parcels. I see Amazon and UPS trucks a lot.

Anyway. This year, with Halloween on a Friday, we didn’t have plans and were going to be at home. We couldn’t be without candy, I figured, even if only a couple intrepid kids came to our (well-lighted) doorstep. So I bought a bag of assorted chocolates (I mean, come on, did you ever want anything besides chocolate?) and Mike got out the big bowl and set it up inside with a chair near the front door.

Which is where it stayed all night, undisturbed, because we didn’t get a single trick or treater.

I don’t blame them, really. They probably figured that our street, which doesn’t have sidewalks (believe me, it’s been brought up with the city), would be slim pickings. And for the most part, they’d have probably been right.

But we had a bag of 150 pieces of Snickers, Milky Way, Twix, etc. for the taking. I’m planning to take it to my creative writing class next week since we’re watching a film and having snacks would be nice, but my point—and I do have one—is that if someone had come to our door on Halloween, we probably would have held out the bowl and said, “Hey! Take as much as you like.”

Sometimes, it pays to go where everyone else isn’t.