The candy economy

It’s been a long time since I traded treats with my classmates in the elementary school cafeteria. Back then I understood the pleasure (or horror) of discovering the treat Mom packed with lunch. I witnessed the bidding wars that ensued over the prize of the lunch table. Sometimes I even knew the power, so unexpectedly gained, so quickly lost, so fiercely sought, of being the only one at the table with candy.

I got a refresher course in candy economics last Halloween. My children accrue candy throughout the year. They get candy canes in their stockings at Christmas, candy hearts on Valentine’s Day, and jellybeans for Easter. Plus, there are numerous birthday parties with inevitable treat bags and piñatas full of sugary booty. Even the kindly man at the dry cleaners or the grandmother-type at the hair salon is quick with a sucker and a smile for my children. But trick-or-treating on Halloween is to my kids what Christmas is to retailers. It’s the big payoff of day-to-day business.

After Halloween, my children always wind up with a surplus of candy, filling at least a gallon-sized freezer bag apiece. This year my dentist suggested that their young teeth would fare better with one day of gorging than they would if we budgeted the sweets, piece by piece, over several weeks. So my husband and I elected to buy our children’s Halloween candy back from them. On the day after Halloween, as long as they finished their meals, they were allowed to eat as much as they could stomach. Whatever remained at the end of the day would be purchased and disposed of at my husband’s office.

The morning of November 1, my children raced through three pieces of candy right after breakfast. Then the trading began. My son, the more worldly and experienced, made a starting offer something like this, “You got Daffy Dots. Do you like those?” My daughter said no. “I don’t think anybody likes those. I’ll take ‘em if you give me a sucker, too.” My daughter, a bit cagier than last year, refused the sucker, but tossed him the Daffy Dots. Another negotiation ensued. Gathering up five snack bars, my daughter asked what her brother would give her for them. “Well,” he said,” You’ve got two Chunky Monkeys and a Whiffle Bar and Chocopops. I guess I’ll give you a package of Gummy Bears for those five.” Done. I’ve tried to counsel my daughter on these tactics, but she always looks offended, as if her innate sense of capitalism is damaged and she has to attend a remedial class. Now I stay out of it.

Each was allowed to take some of their candy to school. Typically I monitor such decisions because sometimes their peanut butter sandwiches get displaced by cupcakes. But it was one of those mornings, and in the midst of trying to find my son’s soccer uniform and my daughter’s alphabet homework, the treats were packed without supervision. It was also my day to sell popcorn during lunch recess at my son’s school, so later, when I arrived at the cafeteria to man the popcorn machine, the first thing I saw was the excited commotion going on in the second-grade section. There sat my son, the CEO of Mrs. Kennedy’s class, distributing his candy as though it were profit sharing. Everyone at the table benefited from his largess, but there was still a lot of jockeying for favor.

“Me first, Josh!”

“I’m your best friend!”

“I’ll be your best friend!”

The lunchroom monitor came over to make sure things didn’t get out of control and was immediately bribed with several jawbreakers. The dissention and negotiation continued.

“Samantha got more than me!”

“Hey, Josh! If you give me this many,” the boy picked out five fingers, “I’ll let you play with my Yu-Gi-Oh Dueling Disc after school!”

The lunchroom monitor, a veteran of many such enterprises and wearing an expression of divine placidity, announced, “Everyone say thank you to Josh for sharing his candy today. What you all have is just fine.” The Alan Greenspan of the cafeteria had spoken.

That evening, we weighed the remainder of their takings on my little kitchen scale. My husband and I had agreed to pay them handsomely, five dollars per pound, and even after their gorging, they each still had just over two pounds of candy. My husband pulled out his wallet and gave each child two five-dollar bills. They danced. They sang. They hardly seemed to notice me when I discreetly took the bags of candy to the garage. We knew enough to take my daughter’s money and put it in her little ceramic piggy bank. It has a cork in its nose for easy withdrawals, and she snuggles it like a pet when she feeds it meals of change. My son retreated to his room with his money, and later when I came in to read with him, I found the bills on the floor among his piles of trading cards and action figures. When I asked what they were doing there, he replied, “They made good magic carpets.”

The next morning my children came bounding down to breakfast, and as I served up oatmeal to counteract their sugar hangovers, my daughter asked, “Where’s our candy?”

I replied that it was gone. My daughter’s mouth dropped open and her eyes filled with tears. “All of it?” Seeing that her reaction was going to spiral quickly out of control, I reminded her that she had been allowed to keep a handful of treats to have after dinner. “But, but…that’s not enough!” she cried.

My son just sat, taking it all in, or perhaps too deep in mourning to be touched by his sister’s upset. “I don’t have anything! You took it all!” she cried, running up the stairs to her room. I followed her and plucked the cork out of her bank so she could see the pile of bills and coins safely inside. I promised that I could take her to the department store on the weekend and she could choose a toy to replace her candy. This prospect stopped her crying, and she began to dress.

As I turned to go back downstairs, she said, “Mama, where’s my candy? Really. Is it really all gone?” She was the investor who’d lost everything in tech stocks and IPOs, and her sorrow and confusion were as poignant as ours was after the bubble burst.

To my young children, cash is still a slippery device, cold and abstract. While satisfying to jingle, sort, and count, it is traded with such a sense of loss that it hardly seems worth it. But candy’s rewards, sweet and immediate, need no transmutation. It needn’t be saved in an interest-bearing account. It doesn’t have to be parceled into investment portfolios to provide for a comfortable retirement. It certainly can’t pay the rent.

But it might buy you the seat of honor at the lunch table.