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Yearly Shake Down

   Written by on October 9, 2014 at 10:51 am

Here we are in Stump County, Virginia, an imaginary county filled with imaginary towns and imaginary people. My name is Horatio Alfonso Lucius Finnegan Whitt but most folks just call me Half.

stump countyI’ve never been sure how I got that name. Personally, I think it is because I’m just a little guy and all of the rest of the family are pretty big. Everywhere I go I hear people saying, “He’s not half the man his father was.” By the way, I am also imaginary. Last year we kept hearing some of those politicians in some place called WashingTown talk about sharing the wealth. We thought it sounded pretty good since none of us in Stump County have much of anything. Our first try at sharing the wealth was Halloween last year. We all thought it worked pretty well except for Big Cletus’ son, Little Big, and a handful of others.

All of the kids had done the “shake down the neighbors for candy” routine and afterwards we had a little community party. We took half of the candy from the kids who had more than half a bag and gave it to the others. There weren’t but six of them who had to give up candy and a whole bunch who got extra so most of the kids were happy. Little Big was pretty upset. We tried to explain to him that this way we made the most kids happy and whatever was good for the most kids was a good thing. Little Big just wouldn’t listen to reason. He thought because he started earlier than the other kids, ran between houses and kept it up later, not to mention toting those feed bags of candy, he should keep it all. We all agree Little Big is a good kid and works hard but it’s tough trying to reason with a ten-year-old.  Anyway. we had a vote and everyone but those six kids voted to share. Little Big got mad and left all of his candy and spent the rest of the winter trapping possums. Since it worked so well last year we did it again this year. The kids shook down the neighborhood; we had our little party and got ready to share the candy. Things must be worse in Stump County than we thought. Not one kid had more than a handful of candy.

Then we tried to figure out what happened. It turns out all of the kids said they didn’t do much since they were counting on sharing with Little Big and the others just like last year. Little Big hadn’t even gone out.

He said he’d just get some from the other kids. The other kids got upset and wanted us to make Little Big go out and collect a feedbag full just like last year but he wouldn’t. Then they said they shouldn’t have to share with him since he didn’t even try. We couldn’t find us a politician to tell us what to do so every kid got a few pieces of candy. The only way we can figure out to solve this is to cancel Halloween next year.

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