The importance of reading the fine print

I don't pay particular attention to what I'm handing out as I reach into the bowl for the trick or treaters. I don't make any effort to save the best stuff for myself, because there really is no "best stuff." Never knowing how many trick or treaters I'm going to get and therefore how much candy to buy, I buy only the good stuff, the stuff I like, in order to ensure the quality of the leftovers. No trick or treater is going to get a cheapo packet of Smarties or a handful of gritty and inaptly named Peanut Butter Kisses from me. No way. None of that. Because if I bought the cheap and boring candy, I'd be forced to pawn the leftovers off on my friends and co-workers, and frankly, they don't want that stuff any more than I do. So instead, I buy the good stuff, and I hoard the excess in much the same way the kids I initially distribute it to probably do.

That said, I really wish I would have paid a bit closer attention to the selections I made when I picked out this year's candy. Because if I'd seen that between the word "Hershey's" and the word "Ghost" was the dreaded phrase "white chocolate" (in tiny, tiny print), I most certainly never would have purchased the Hershey's Ghosts/Reese's Pumpkins combo bag that I did. At the very least, I would have been picking out all those purple foil-wrapped blocks and getting them out of my house first, rather than handing out the Take 5s and the Almond Joys and the peanut M&Ms and leaving those ghosts in the bowl.

White chocolate is not real chocolate, and the only reason it even needs to exist is to enhance an occasional latte and to make TCBY's white chocolate mousse. Any other incarnation of this affront to proper candy I truly want nothing to do with.