So many chances to perfect candy corn fangs.

Hi harpy-friends!  It’s Friday, Friday, Gotta-Get-Down-On-Friday, and although I have no Partyin’! Partyin’! (YEAH!) plans, I’m in a strangely good mood.  Because I have candy corn.

Brach’s candy corn, which is really the only kind worth buying (IMO), which is only available for about four-to-six weeks in the fall, and around which I cannot control myself.  I will eat it until I am literally ill from sugar-overload.  And then I will have “just a couple more” pieces.

We’re just over a week out from Halloween, so I’ll probably have to lay in another bag to get me through the holiday, at which point I’ll need to detox for another year.

So what am I getting for all those trick-0r-treaters?  What trick-or-treaters?  We haven’t had any come to our door in years.  But that doesn’t stop me or the Dude from acting like 8 year olds:  OOOH, Peanut M&Ms!  PixyStix!  Ewww, circus peanuts!  True, I won’t be buying much of anything until November 1, because I am poooooor, but watch out, I will drop the People’s Elbow on anyone who tries to get in between me and a half-price bag of Reese’s mini peanut-butter cups.

I’m old enough that part of my childhood included apples and homemade popcorn balls, which were always disappointing.  I would hoard Mr. Goodbars and bite-sized Snickers, and pretend to valiantly “share” all those Special Darks and butterscotch drops with my parents.  (Bleaahhh.)

So–obviously–today’s FFT is about your favorite (and of course least favorite) Halloween treats.   Time to wax nostalgic about your years as a trick-or-treater, or just admit your cheap-and-junky sugar fixes now.  And what, if anything, do you pass out on Halloween?  Are you the splurger who kids seek out from far-flung neighborhoods?  Or is your name cursed by children who remember you as “the toothbrush lady”?  I remember you, Toothbrush House.

Get your jitters under control and tell us!

LYLAS! Via NASA Videographer @ Flickr.This post on how Facebook can work as a kind of trippy time machine by putting you back in touch (of a sort) with people from your formative years is the inspiration for today's FFT.

I’ve certainly had the “whoa, weirdness” feeling when catching up (even by lurking) with the people who knew you when, but Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s flashbacks have apparently been rather traumatizing.  I can’t say the junior high (or middle school, or however you identify that epoch from 12 to 14) was the highlight of my life, but I never had anyone dump yogurt on my head or spread vicious rumors about me.

That said, we all know that young people can be cruel, nasty little pieces of work to each other.  In today’s thread, I’d love to see either a vivid portrait of your junior high self (and how you have or haven’t changed, other than the obvious stuff), a tale of adolescent horror, or your experiences dealing with friends and/or “friends” that you lost track of and only reconnected with due to social media.  Have you used FB (or school reunions or whathaveyou) to borrow Brodesser-Akner’s phrase: ” put [your] life’s ugliest social chapter to rest”?

I wish I had a good story for this one, but I was a “gifted” but not heinously self-conscious spelling-bee nerd.  I had big bangs, but no Guess? jeans.  I lived in an OK neighborhood, but I wasn’t super-pretty.  I passed notes, but I never got those “secret admirer” candy canes at Christmas.  I didn’t qualify for the “popular group” (really, that’s what we called them), but I had plenty of friends and typically awkward interactions with boys I was sweet on.  For me, junior high was one part “normal” life, one part benign neglect.

This is late getting up today, so I’ll chime in regarding The Facebook Effect in comments.

Were you Queen of the Cafeteria?  A neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie?  Could John Hughes have filmed your life?  Bring it!  Or I will SO sleep over at Lisa’s on Friday.