Today my wife asked me to take a look at this page, which has a very short list of some alternatives to giving candy to kids on halloween. Don’t get me wrong — I agree with the points the guy makes on the overweight problem with kids these days. I’m just not comfortable with being the “weird house on the corner” just yet. I’d like to wait until we’re at an age when people can walk away from our door saying, “they’re probably just senile.”

If I’m gonna be on board with this, I need to ask — do any of your kids get pencils and balls as halloween treats? If so, do they like them or are they disappointed? If they don’t get them, ask them what they’d think if they got those as treats and let me know.

We already have the nutcase dog on the corner. Now that we’ve terrorized the kids with a barking hound from hell, I’d rather not shove it in their face by throwing a number 2 pencil in their bag. Saturday morning we’ll probably wake up to our pumpkins looking like pencil-cushions.