CHOOSE POTATO

Choose Potato was originally published in Written Tales. View the original version here.

    My favorite story to tell is perhaps the dumbest. It’s a tradition that started the night of Halloween, 1978. I remember it being a rather tepid night-- lissome trees idled calmly down the block, strung-up with papier mâché skulls and pumpkins nestled amongst the leaves, and stepping outside felt like entering the cloudy broth of long-forgotten stew, a lukewarm bowl valiantly waiting for someone to pick up the spoon and start slurping. Ravens swooped like catafalques and humid twilight air sung with the giggles of trick-or-treaters.

    It was seven o’clock. I’d just come home from a shift at the diner, and my feet were already aching from eight hours of taking orders and whirling around with my little notepad. Service had been slow that day--which would’ve normally dampened the mood because it meant fewer tips-- but it was impossible to be dour on a day like Halloween. It was the one night of the year I could still feel spry, imbued with old childhood fascination that crawls out of every adult in the middle of the night while they sleep. They go to bed believing the myth of the Headless Horseman and wake up with a stack of paperwork denser than underground strata. Whatever traces of lingering magic are then swept away by the pulpish hell of corporate suits with faceless, bulbous heads. It’s the sad fact of life, impossible to avoid.

    “Goodnight,” I called to Arnold as I clocked out for the night  “And happy Halloween.”

    “Halloween?” He questioned. “That’s not today, is it?”

“From dusk ‘till dawn.”

    My boss swept a hand over his bald patch, completely beige office lacking even the smallest inkling of macabre decor. In that moment, I almost pitied the man-- he’d lost his sense of wonder so many years ago that he never once thought to go find it.

“Well I’ll be. Happy Halloween then, Margaret. Go give yourself a spook.”

Unlike my boss, I had held onto this ghost in my bones until I was nearly twenty, but the crippling weight of becoming a homeowner had squeezed me like a fresh summer lime. Without enough income to send myself to college, I filled out an application at Brown Butter Diner and stayed there ever since. My boyfriend-- but soon-to-be-husband-- proposed a year later, and shortly before my twenty-third birthday I was walking down the aisle with dollar store roses. We became two ships passing in the night, he and I, with me flying out on velvet black wings and Kirby returning with a beakfull of worms.

Things stayed that way for almost ten years: afloat, but just barely. However, money had become particularly tight after Kirby wrecked his car on the freeway last month. Bad luck must’ve followed him home, because a week after that, our oven took its final breath while cooking a pan of baked ziti. A plume of black smoke emerged from the doors and swirled into the rafters, and our pasta was speckled with ash. And if things couldn’t get any worse, Missy Cohen sent a baseball through our window as we sat there mourning our meal.

By the time everything was replaced, we were left with empty savings--we could barely afford to buy groceries, let alone have enough to splurge on Halloween pleasantries. I despised our new fate; we were now deigned to be the house without candy this year. On a street teeming with cardboard caskets and front-lawn graves, it felt like we were doing the block a disservice. Under the orange twinkle of October's silver moon, every candy-apple child deserved a little treat.

“I could run to the store. See if there’s anything on sale?” I watched as Kirby excavated his head from the kitchen cabinet. He had just finished raiding the pantry, where we’d come up with a small bag of Smarties.

“At this hour? The shelves’ll be sweeped. Better to just give out what we have.”

“But we have next to nothing! One kid could take home everything in this bowl and finish it on his way.”

“Well then…” I shoved Kirby aside and began to scrounge myself. “We’ll just have to get creative. The old lady on the corner gives out sticks of gum. We could do something like that.”

“Gum? Are you kidding? How would you feel getting gum for Halloween?”

I thought about it.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I said. “Maybe we should turn off all the lights and pretend we’re not home.”

“Oh yeah, that’ll go over well. They neighbors’ll start asking where we went with both our cars in the garage. Should I tell them we flew away on a broomstick?”

“Oh shut up, would you? I’m just giving suggestions! If you can come up with anything better, I’m all ears.”

Kirby straightened up and began to toss a potato around. As it fumbled onto the floor, I watched his eyes spark up like satellites.

“What if,” He said, raising a skeletal finger. “What if we gave the kids a choice? We can tell them we have a bucket of candy, but then we show them a potato.”

“What?”

Kirby began to demonstrate, presenting the spud like a relic, but I was still lost on the idea. It looked like my husband was playing a failing game of charades.

“We give them the choice. Potato or candy. I guarantee they’ll choose potato.”

“Oh really?” I asked, raising a skeptic brow. “And why’s that?”

“Because,” said Kirby, “Kids go crazy over goofy stuff. Handing out gum? Now that’s just plain boring. Nobody asks for a stick of gum-- they give that out at the dentist. But a potato? You never see that sort of thing. I bet you ten-to-one everyone’ll get a kick out of it. Parents will be confused, and the kids’ll  think it’s the funniest gag in the world.” He stepped forward vigilantly, once again presenting the spud. “So whaddya say? Candy… or potato?”

And that’s how this strange tradition started. Tonight, as the clock strikes dead on October ‘84, more than twenty-five kids have chosen potato. Each time they careen down the steps with a cumbersome gait, either getting caught or tripping on the skirts of their costumes, triumphantly proclaiming “I GOT A POTATO!” to their friends and family. One kid shouted, “A POTATO JUST LIKE LAST YEAR!” and another said, “Oh, you’re the potato house? You guys are legends!” 

What started as an ad hoc solution to an embarrassing financial quandary has turned into a joyful tradition. Children are always given the choice, but over and over again they choose the almighty potato.