The Ultimate Buzz

The Ultimate Buzz

You'll have to excuse me if it seems like I'm going a little too fast with this column but I'm not able to help it at this point in time and what I mean by that is I'm the innocent victim of a post Halloween Sugar Overload and the truth be told I'm not really that big on sugar except of course for the occasional after dinner mint or a cookie or a little ice cream from time to time or maybe a little candy in-between meals or when I'm resting on the couch or right before bedtime and that's what makes this elongated sugar buzz such a mystery for me because I didn't really seek it out to begin with because there's not really anything natural or healthy about sucking down gobs of sucrose and fructose in various shapes and sizes and wrapped in all that pretty paper which is really just a marketing gimmick in the first place aimed at unsuspecting kids who are trick or treating and I only went along to insure their safety and not to develop my own supply of candy which by the way is manufactured to stand the test of time so that some day in the next decade or so we'll still be eating Halloween candy from this year and it will still be edible except for the chocolate which won't make you sick but it won't look good or taste all that hot and so I was just shepherding the kids from house to house with a flashlight in the hopes that we might be done with this pagan process sometime before midnight and I could go home and get some sleep because sleep is important although right now I'm beginning to question whether or not sleep really has any value whatsoever in the overall picture and at the very first house the lady at the door who was about eighty years old and had misplaced her glasses said that I was just about the biggest kid she had ever seen and that it must cost my parents a fortune to feed me and would I like to have some extra candy because of my size and how she didn't mind cause she got the bargain bag at CashCow for $2.99 and that's how I started my own stash of candy and it went from there and as it turned out every house we stopped at offered me candy even though they had their glasses on and they could clearly see that I wasn't a kid and I wasn't still growing but it was Halloween and it was fun so just take a piece for yourself and before I knew it I had too much to carry in my pocket so that I just started eating it to keep from having to carry it around all night and as you might guess I sort of lost count of how much candy I had eaten but I really didn't think it was a problem so we stopped after awhile under a streetlight and we ate about half of what we had already collected and then we started all over again with the first house and the lady without the glasses thought I was another big kid and she said she didn't know there was another big kid on the street but I could have some candy too and finally the police told us to go home and stop ringing doorbells at one o'clock in the morning so we did and I let the kids spend some quality time with their mother except that it really wasn't quality time because it lasted until almost 3:00 in the morning when they all of a sudden stopped running around in circles and collapsed in a big heap on the floor with a half-eaten sucker in one hand and a garbage bag of candy clutched in the other and we had to drag them up the steps and put them to bed and my wife said she was feeling a little tired and I told her to go ahead and get some rest and how for some reason I wasn't sleepy and that I might go downstairs and read War And Peace and instead I decided to write this column as a sort of sentimental memory of Halloween past present and never-ending and how the candy part is the best part and I hope that our stash will last at least until Easter and I finally finished this column but I forgot what it was about but it'll be time to go to work in about an hour or so anyway and if you really want to know the truth I don't think one more piece of candy will hurt a thing as long as I make sure to eat it before I have my morning cup of coffee.

(As of press time, Mr. Sartain was said to be recovering satisfactorily at an undisclosed Sugar Detoxification Facility.)