Halfway through the evening it was clear who was ahead. Of course it wasn’t a competition, but if it were a competition, Edward was handily beating his sister in the candy collection department. She noticed it too. Ruby’s pillowcase was fuller than it had ever been before, but Edward’s was fuller-er. How could this be? They were going up to the same houses, ringing the same doorbells, and saying the same “Trick or Treat!”s. And in fact, due to his wagon maneuvering, Edward actually missed a few houses that Ruby snagged while he was catching up! How did he get more candy?!
After some smooth investigating, this is what I discovered. Whenever the candy distributor said “take one,” Edward took two. If they said “take two,” he took three. If they said “take three,” he took a handful, and if (why would they say this?) they said “take a handful,” he would basically pour the entire bowl of candy into his pants and run for it. Ruby, on the other hand, is a rule follower. She took exactly as much candy as was decreed.
There were a few people who pushed back. “No, no, just one,” I would hear them say. And Edward would reluctantly drop two of the four pieces he had chosen back into the bowl. But still, I think that he ended up with one more piece of candy than Ruby for every house we visited. And we visited a lot of houses. We were out for almost two hours. This was, in my mind, partially to make up for the abysmal Halloween we had last year. I figured, let’s go nuts! And we did. But one of us went a little more nuts. But hey, you can’t argue with that candy haul, can you? Plus, now he’s less likely to notice if a few pieces somehow “disappear.” It’s a good thing I am a musician and not a professor of ethics.