Halloween: Where You Come Away With a Handful of Baby Ruths and Swine Flu.

Ruth! Ruth! Ruth! Baby? Ruth!

---

Halloween is one of the most awesome times of the year. It's fall, so everything is damp and red and gold and cozy. You can start drinking pumpkin spice lattes, you can have a fire in the fireplace, you can curl up under your fleecy electric throw blanket, you can break out the Bath & Body Works Apple Harvest antibacterial foaming soap. And then on the 31st you get to give fun-size Twixes to little giraffes and baby Elmos and pint-size draculas. I love autumn, I love Halloween.

What I don't love is all the bum-bum germs. 

Nothing freaks me out more than walking around the local town center to trick-or-treat, seeing and hearing all the coughing, sneezing, sniveling robots and witches and ballerinas wipe their noses and then reach into the common bowl of treats, rifle through them, and select the perfect mini Snickers. Then it's my kids' turn to reach into the germ incubator and pick their fun-sized bar of crispity crunchety peanutbuttery influenza, whereupon later they will go home, paw through their sack of candy, tear open the wrappers, and stuff chocolate into their gaping maws. With hands now properly coated with the sputum of so many other children. Mmm.

So how can we remedy this? We can't. The end. Love, Jo.






OK, well, I do have an idea or two. Awhile back, a friend suggested that you could possibly kill all the germs with fire ice. She wondered if maybe by putting all the candy into the freezer, you might end up with not only deliciously frozen treats, but deactivated bum-bum germs. I think this is a remote possibility, although I tend to think that freezing your candy only cryogenically preserves the viruses, to be later reactivated by your warm fingers.

You could also clean each and every piece of wrapped candy with a Clorox wipe, but even I, who cleans off her groceries, think this is an inconvenience.

Rather, I think the better option is to come home from trick-or-treating, take off your shoes, wash your hands, use hand sanitizer (OK this is just my regular routine), but then here's the kicker, one by one open each (or a select bunch of) candies, throw away the wrappers, then rewash your hands and put all the unwrapped candies into a bowl or jar. Then your kid can snack from the bowl of treats and not have to touch the wrappers that so many sweaty, sticky little fingers have previously manhandled.

Overkill? Not during flu season, says I. I know you're rolling your eyes at me, but that is why you will be eating Skittles + Snivels, and Reece's Pieces of Poop, and Hershey Squirts, and Butt-fingers, and Goober Boogers, and BubbleTapeWorms, whereas my children will be eating bum-bum-germ-free delights. Thank you and good night.