Halloween was even scarier than usual this year, at least for the kids in one Maryland neighborhood. Sit around the campfire, little ones, and let me tell you all about it.
As you may know, obesity is being called a disease these days. People are said to be putting their lives at risk if they indulge in a Nestle’s Crunch or a McDonald’s hamburger. Nothing against careful eating habits, but there’s nothing catastrophic about a heaping of junk food once in a while.
Fortunately, the Halloween ritual of costumed kids going around extracting candy from neighbors continued this year as usual. But the kids in Takoma Park, Maryland, got an extra fright when they came to the home of Michael Tabor.
Tabor is a politically correct hater of Ronald McDonald who warbles that candy is nothing less than rat poison. The Washington Post reports that Tabor was on a nutritional mission this Halloween. When the kids came to his door, he adopted the terrifying guise of dietary hobgoblin. Harangued the kids about the evils of candy and warned that chocolate could cause could cost them a limb. Then offered a choice: a boring apple, or the usual chocolate kids love. His wife kept a tally. A few kids picked the apple, poor doomed souls. But so many just picked the candy despite Tabor’s ghoulish harangue that his wife finally stopped counting.
Tabor says if he had given kids a choice between one kind of apple and another, then they would have picked an apple. Yeah, probably. Wow, that was scary, wasn’t it, kids?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.