We were that penny family.

Yes, it’s with great shame that I admit this. You know that family, the one that gave out pennies on Halloween. Yes, you were hoping for a king-size Kit Kat or even a little mini Kit-Kat and instead you got a few pennies. We always hated those houses. But one year, we were the penny family.

It still shames me. This is one of those traumas I’ll never get over. I don’t remember what year it was. There was a giant scare about razor blades in Snickers bars, poisoned apples, and cyanide in Tylenol. Nothing was safe!

We had costumes, Sister #2 and I. We wore them to school for the Halloween parade. It was so wonderful. Halloween was the greatest holiday ever. Free candy! Of course, the joy of Halloween was always tempered by the fact that we always had to pool our booty. Yeah, my parents were a couple of commies. There was no keeping your hard-earned loot. We’d get home, dump out our pillowcases and pick a few favorites. The rest of our take was then pooled into a giant, yellow-orange Tupperware bowl to be shared with the rest of the family.

Really, when you think of it my parents were just making us get sweets for them. That’s why we had that commie sharing stuff. My friends always told tales of Halloween candy they saved until Christmas. I couldn’t even imagine. Usually by Thanksgiving the only candy left in the bowl were those gross peanut butter kisses wrapped in orange or black waxed paper.

We had the neighborhood mapped. We knew the good houses to go too. Jodi Hanson’s neighbors, the Sanfords, always handed out full-size candy bars. We loved that house. The Bierkebek’s neighbors always gave out cans of pop. The house next to the Layer’s always had a nifty haunted house type thing. We could always stop at Aunt Rosie and Uncle Fred’s to warm up. We loved going to their house, because Rosie always gave us hot cocoa.

But that all changed the year we had to be the penny family.

We had eaten dinner and then our parents broke the news to us. They had led us on, making us eat dinner in record time before they broke our hearts.

“You can’t go trick or treating tonight.”

Sister #2 and I were in deep shock and denial. Surely this was some sort of twisted joke. It was Halloween. It was our kidly right to go out and beg candy from strangers. This couldn’t be happening.

Mom and Dad sat us down and explained all the danger lurking in the candy this year. They weren’t kidding. They really weren’t going to let us go out trick or treating.

Oh the humanity! The injustice. If I had known we would have called the ACLU and Amnesty International to lodge a complaint. But I was only ten or so, the best I could do was break their evil, commie, concerned parent hearts.

We planned operation trick or treat. Sister #2 and I gathered up our coats, shoes, and costumes. We snuck into the bedroom to get ready. See, putting our coats on was supposed to help matters. Usually there was a battle about coats. Wearing a coat ruined the effect of the costume. Who wants to put a coat on over their costume? I always envied California kids who could just tramp around with their costume blazing, unhampered by a coat.

But we were willing to compromise this year.

We climbed into our winter coats and oh-so-cleverly put our costumes over it. Sister #2 was Wonder Woman. I was Snow White. They were those cheap $7 costumes you could buy at Snyder Drug. They were plastic, and tied at the back of your neck. The masks were some other sort of plastic with eye, nose, and mouth holes. Hideous things, really. I don’t think they even make costumes like that anymore.

We came out of our room, costumes and masks in place– we were sure that their hearts would melt at our utter cuteness and then the trick or treating could commence.

Wrong.

They didn’t budge, not an inch. Instead they handed us a bowl full of pennies and sent us out to the front step. We got to hand out the pennies to all our friends as they stopped by. It was torture. All the kids in the neighborhood got to go trick or treating. Clearly their parents didn’t care about poisoned apples and razor blades. The kids came by telling of people giving out 45s (those are records for you young ‘uns), toys, and gift certificates.

We gave out pennies.

It was the worst Halloween ever. We were the penny family and I will never be able to get over the shame.