Mysteryshrink’s You Get What You Pay For Psychology Tip:  It’s best to keep your limitations to yourself for as long as you can.  Once they are out there, they are etched in the minds of others forever.

Think of something you are uncomfortable doing…say, for example…you are one of those otherwise lovely people who has secretly avoided the role of being the candy-the-giver-outer on Halloween…for years and years.  

I’m just saying… maybe you’re one of those people who turn out all the lights and hunker down in a back bedroom with only the light of the television.  Maybe even, one time when your special person promised a certain group of teachers that he would bring a slab of Mississippi Mud Bars to a meeting on Novemeber 1st, maybe you and he whipped up a batch using only the light from the refrigerator…your heads stuck inside the door…

Dateline:  Not quite dark, Halloween Night, family gathering.

I hadn’t spent Halloween with my siblings and clan since we were kids.  When I walked into the house, I noticed the countertop in the den was stacked with all sorts of individually wrapped candy and I knew what that meant.  Now, usually, I could have gotten away with my “gee, I’m so busy doing something” expression and not been faced with wondering who was going to answer the door for the goblins and such.  But not on this night as my sibs had limitations to their mobility and the always faithful niece had her wonderful girls to manage.

I’m good at avoidance, but even I couldn’t pretend to be lost in the football game while my sister, recovering from a knee replacement, hobbled to the front door on her walker.  Or my brother, who had broken his hand, and on pain meds felt his way along the wall to the door.  Yikes.  What to do, What to do? 

I looked so deceptively capable…walking to the door-wise.  Thus, I decided the fairest thing to do was to step up and nip the old bud.  I announced that I would not be doing the giggling, good-neighborly handing out the candy thing as I am not constitutionally capable of the task.  I admitted my years of cowardly hiding and stated that if they were going to leave the porch light on, I would not be responsible.  My choice would be to leave the light off and go on with our evening as if we were a perfectly normal family.

I’d thought I’d done a gentle, firm job of stating my position.  My announcement was met with six sets of squenched eyes and headshakes of disbelief.  “Not my fault,” I claimed, “I thought you guys knew.”

Clearly they’d never even suspected.   My siblings and various other chips of my Danish father’s block were horrified.  Various gasps of distress filled the awkward space I’d created in the evening.   After the ugly truth that I was not kidding sunk in, the questions began.  “Why?”  “Was it some terrible Halloween experience?”  “Did we do something back when you were a kid?”  “Is it the children?”  “Are you against children?”

Now here’s the kicker.  My fellow evening partners were so absorbed in my admission, they forgot to turn on the porch light.  Not one innocent child or anyone else rang the doorbell.

Thus, I am now, and will be forever, the “one who can’t hand out candy on Halloween.”   Not that my reputation for other weirdnesses doesn’t precede me.  It’s just that I threw in a new quirk…when I didn’t have to.

Thus, my friends.  Learn from my mistake and don’t mention any of those odd little fears until you are absolutely positive you are about to be exposed.