Suburban Kvetch

August is the new October

Nothing says hot, humid summer like candy corn, costumes and bags of mini chocolate bars.

While I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that my kids start school before Labor Day, the folks at the big box stores have moved the sunscreen and flip flops to the end caps and stocked their shelves with all things scary, creepy and spooky.   The Fall fabulousness is there too, with fake haystacks and cutesy scarecrows, spicy scented candles and everything pumpkin.

I think it’s wrong to buy school supplies when I’m wearing sunscreen but with two kids in high school that starts soon, I have stacks of spiral note books and boxes of pens and mechanical pencils next to the bug spray and aloe in the storage closet.

On principal I don’t walk down the Halloween aisles before October, but the permeation of holidays into months where they really don’t belong, makes my shopping excursions more like scavenger hunts.

Who buys their Halloween candy in August?  Really.  Who?  I can’t buy it before the day of Halloween if there’s going to be anything left for a wayward trick-or-treater who happens to ring my doorbell.  Either that or I buy the candy no one likes and then the kids skip my house anyway.  No one wants lollypops or bags of pretzels on Halloween — even in cute themed bags, just for the record.

Then the other day I walked into the local card shop and was greeted by the scent of peppermint.  Peppermint candles.  To my right was a display of Christmas ornaments and in the corner of the store a friendly clerk was setting up a toy train.

“Can I help you find something?”

“Yes,” I said.  “Do you have Halloween cards?”

I gathered a few, paid and left — humbly reminded that things can always be worse.