It’s that time of year. When everyone in your neighborhood starts to set out pumpkins on their front porches, every white girl in America visits a corn maze just for the Instagram picture, and “Netflix and chill” turns into “scary movies and scream.” That’s right… Halloween season is in full swing, and to me, that means only one thing: Candy corn.

You see, my mom loves to decorate our house based on the time of year, and therefore she put out a pretty orange basket full of candy corn in the center of our dining room table. It sits there beautifully, staring me down everytime I walk past it.  I slowly begin taking candy corn from the basket each day, and as the month of October progressed, the amount of candy corn in the basket lessened gradually until its meniscus barely touched an inch below the rim.

My mom took note of this occurrence, and asked me what was going on. Guilty but pleading innocent, I told her I simply always craved more candy corn and each day took a little handful. More candy corn?  You heard that right. Even after my mom measured out the intended serving size of candy corn for me to eat after school from a bag completely unrelated to the decoration candy corns, I still wanted more.  One serving was simply not enough, and my cravings led me to take more candy corn from my mom’s decor.

In response to my burglary of her beloved decoration, she put a note on the basket for me to discover the next time I tried to snatch a handful. It read “No Kaitlin.” Written on a bright pink post-it note plastered in the center of the basket, it entirely ruined the beauty of the Halloween decoration. This brings me to my final question… Why couldn’t I just eat the candy corn if the aesthetic of the decoration is destroyed by the note telling me not to?

Now after reading this some may agree with my good-hearted mother that my addiction belongs on the television show My Strange Addiction. I tried to come up with a replacement food,  such as grapes or pretzels, in hopes that maybe I would end up loving one of those even more than I do the candy corn. I even tried nuts.

But nothing can quite compare.

Conclusively, I am certain that as squirrels will stick to their nuts, I’ll stick to my candy corn.