Since Halloween is my favorite holiday, I thought I’d share something about one of my all-time favorite candies.

Candy corn!

Yeah, I know…most people think they’re disgusting, but for some reason I can eat them until my stools look like a colorful swirl of white, orange and yellow.

Thinking about candy corn makes me remember a childhood memory about the time I decided to play a trick on my mother.

Let me preface this by saying that as a child, I was constantly making up heinous stories to freak out my parents.

I was a festive little storyteller who was a combination of Hans Christian Andersen and Freddy Krueger.

From the moment I was born I knew I was going to be an actor, so I used every second of my childhood to practice the art of LYING.

Like for instance, one time I told my mother I accidentally swallowed a domino while playing with it. I ran into the kitchen very dramatically, grabbing my throat; making choking sounds while my face turned from red to blue. She totally freaked and started slapping the back of my head in the hopes of dislodging it. Finally, I started laughing and said, “I’m only kidding!”

And one time around Halloween, I suddenly noticed that the white tip of a candy corn resemble the tip of a cuspid tooth. So, I cleverly broke off the tip and ran to my mother with one hand covering my mouth and the other hand holding the candy in an open palm; screeching, “Look…Look…I tripped and fell, hitting my mouth on the edge of the coffee table and it chipped off the end of my tooth!”

Let me just say….she was not the slightest bit amused.

I also enjoy Halloween because of getting dressed up in a costume and going to a party. Sadly, I hardly do it anymore, other than getting dress up at work. My greatest joy now, is watching all the little kids walking through the city streets and also the store I work in.

Here are a few photos of some past Halloween costumes….

The year I dressed up as the Greek mythology character – Pan.

The year Cats was popular on Broadway, I decided to be a cat. The cute bunny you see standing next to me grabbing my tail, was a girl I worked with.

*Right after this photo was taken….I scratched both her eyes out.

Me, as Norma Desmond from the movie Sunset Boulevard.

Aren’t I pretty…..ugly?

This years costume…..Ronnie, a child of the corn.

Happy Halloween everyone….Boo!

X

If you look up the word Italian in the dictionary, I’m sure you’ll find the word eating included in it’s definition.

Italians and eating are synonymous.

Italians, eating, and talking are even more synonymous.

The photo you see above is of my mothers side of the family sitting down for a traditional Italian family dinner.

Notice the man sitting in the middle holding the wine glass. That was my mothers father. And I can still remember to this day that until he filled his wine glass and took the first sip, NO ONE was permitted to eat a morsel of food. Everyone took their eating cue from my grandfather. I swear to god, it was like sitting at the table with Marlon Brando as the godfather.

I don’t know whether any of you have ever seen the movie Moonstruck, but if you haven’t please rent it because it epitomizes what being Italian is. And all of the scenes you’ll watch of the Castorini family sitting around the dinner table is exactly how an Italian family acts while eating.

They like to talk. They like to talk VERY LOUD. And they all like to talk at the same time while every sentence overlaps each other.

Food seems to bring out the passion in Italians to the point of having to SCREAM every single word they utter.

“RONNIE….PASS ME THE GRAVY!”

So, if you’re looking to have a nice quiet meal, please don’t eat with an Italian family because I guarantee you’ll require ear plugs and several glass of Chianti to calm your nerves.

I remember my stepmother saying that the first time she sat down with our entire family to eat dinner, she thought we were all going to kill one another. She comes from a German-English background where dinner was eaten almost in silence, so eating with Italians felt like being in a sanitarium cafeteria.

You see, Italians like to wait until they sit down to dinner in order to have family discussions. The dinner table is a place where everything is literally laid out on the table, which means it’s nothing for them to argue while food is flying out of their mouths; slamming dishes around, as they’re passing platefuls of stuffed peppers and eggplant.

Now, to an non-Italian this may seem like strange behavior. But to an Italian it’s perfectly normal.

Dinner wouldn’t be dinner unless one good, heated discussion (half in English, half in Italian) was completed by the time the cannolis and coffee were ingested.

But no matter what was said in the heat of the moment, ten seconds later an Italian family will be kissing and hugging one another; saying what a wonderful dinner it was.

The men will all resume into the living room; smoking Italian cigars. While the women will resume into the kitchen; doing dishes and preparing Italian doggie bags for everyone to take home with them.

All looking forward to their next family dinner….