I remember my mom checking all of our candy when we were younger. Wrappers that looked suspicious (along with the candy inside) were tossed. Anything in a twisted wrapper was removed, because it would be too easy for an evil-doer to unwrap it, poison it, and put the wrapper right back on. (Goodbye dumdums! You aren't that great anyway!)I was thinking about the "dangers of Halloween" recently, now that I am a parent myself. Brooke is still too little to trick-or-treat, but next year she will be out there cruising for candy. Then I got an email from one of the parenting sites that I am a member of, that essentially destroys all of Halloween perceptions I had. Most notably?
The number of children poisoned from doctored Halloween candy given by a stranger?
Zero
Yeah, its all an Urban Legend. I think it was just an excuse for our parents to eat our candy. "Oh, that Butterfinger wrapper looks like its been tampered with. Give that to Mommy".
Surfing around I did find some interesing information about parents who tried to make kids deaths look like the result of doctored candy, assuming that it was a widespread occurance and that they could easily just throw another case into the mix. Check out the snopes.com investigation into Halloween candy for a fun read ;)
After reading this post my mom reminded me that one year we took our candy to the local hospital to have it x-rayed for razor blades. And that, my friends, is evidence of the power of the Urban Legend.
No comments:
Post a Comment