While the debate rages on over what the premier Halloween treat is, I have to sit back and watch the hoopla with disinterest. Sure, you can tempt me with “sugary” this and “intoxicating” that, but there is one constant which prevents me from enjoying Halloween indefinitely. The cruel joke persists as chocolate bar companies ram down our throats those damnable syllables that rake my ears like the obeisant-less stately raven, who knocks at the chamber door of my enjoyment on All Hallows Eve — the “fun size.”
Oh, how these miniscule less-than-morsels taunted me with their brash diminutiveness, shouting “Look at me! The pinnacle of human achievement lies not in the grand structures, the vast and trunkless legs of stone that lie eroding in the distant land, but in the palm of your hand. Look how small we can make it!” The truncated bars lay their claim in sublimity, not in grandeur but in grandiosity.
I would lash out at these bars, scoffed at by all, as the less refined children would, in their brow-furrowing attempt to understand the situation, say things such as “Fun size? What’s so fun about this size?” But the bars would just sit in the palm of my hand, silent, mocking me, laughing in their refusal to respond. Then I would engage with them, in conversation consisting of rip, tear, chew, rip, tear, chew, rip tear chew, until eight of them were gone.
Laughter is the only response in the face of absurdity. A young boy, lying supine, his mouth brown at the corners, laughing away as he learns that what he does not understand he must consume.
Perhaps we can turn this heinousness into our weapon. Perhaps the fun size will be an eternal lesson to children everywhere — an unsaid and unintended message from Nestle which screams “Face the irony! We want you to believe that this is actually better; that it is in fact fun; that you, child, will participate in any adjective we throw at you.”
The best Halloween treat? There is no discussion while the haze of fun size intervenes, clouding our judgment. The curse remains, to be lifted — nevermore?
