Miah Week 6 - The Potato Experiment

 The Potato Experiment

        I'm starting this off by wishing you all a happy Halloween, if you celebrate. Since it's objectively the best holiday on the Gregorian calendar, I feel unnaturally obligated to make a blog post about it.

        If you celebrate it, what did you dress up as on Monday? I'm altering the blog post format to ask this question early because it's a matter of utmost urgency. I have to know. I'm predicting that you all either went as some type of anthropomorphized animal, a character from a TV show, or one of those inflatable dinosaurs¹ that always accidentally end up causing some serious blunt force trauma.

        For my costume, I just put on my clothing from when I worked at the renaissance faire last year. It worked pretty well, actually, because I can play the lyre, so I could tell people that I was a bard or something if they asked.

        But you're not here for me. You're here for the potato, and, more specifically, the potato experiment. Now, I know what you're thinking: I'm so tired of you stalling. I just want to skim this blog post in peace and reach my one-comment-per-person quota. I respect it, but you should stop thinking that, and instead start thinking: I am so horrendously interested in this potato that it's become a surreal experience for me. I love your blog so much. Tell me more about this potato experiment.

        Of course I will, you incredibly individualized and not at all preconceived thinker! The potato experiment goes like this:

        Prep and wash thirteen potatoes, and then place them into a bag. When the doorbell rings with trick-or-treaters, place one potato directly in the center of a candy bowl.

        Yeah, just like that. Man, you're good at following hypothetical directions that I've already saved to my camera roll.

        After successfully planting the potato, ask the trick-or-treaters any variation of this: "Do you want candy or the potato? You can only pick one." Make sure to only have one potato in the bowl, otherwise the immersion of just one potato nested between Jolly Ranchers will break, and the shock value won't be as strong. If they choose the potato, put one tally on the side of Potato, either mentally or on physical paper. If they choose the candy, do the same with a Candy category. Continue to do this until you have run out of potatoes or run out of small children, whichever comes first. The potato experiment is meant to gauge how many kids will give in to their own curiosity and the inherent oddity that comes with getting a single potato, and how many will choose candy either way.

        I decided to conduct this experiment Halloween night. My first pair of trick-or-treaters did very well, and took the singular potato. See the tally below.

        I was ecstatic. The experiment was working! Out of 100% of the kids I've given stuff to, 50% of them took the potato! I couldn't wait to give more potatoes to trick-or-treaters in a gated Jewish neighborhood.

        I'm pretty sure you just caught on to that faster than I did. I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to expect trick-or-treaters while I was actively surrounded by Orthodox Jews. Either way, nothing else happened, and those were the only two kids that showed up. I have deemed the experiment incomplete, and will try again next year in a more Halloween-celebrated area.

        I will admit, it disappointed me a little. I dressed up as a court jester. I had my lyre out. I was playing Greensleeves on it. I had twelve potatoes left. Still, nobody came, although I guess I can only blame myself for ignoring the glaringly obvious hole in my master plan.

        Thanks for sticking around to hear about it anyway. A failed experiment still yields some type of result, after all. As a bonus for reading, here's a picture of me on Monday night playing the lyre for any and all blackmail purposes.

        Look at me go. I'm strumming away the iconic 80s pop hit Greensleeves². Now, I'm going to ask you the same question I did at the beginning: What did you dress up as?

        ¹Speaking of inflatable costumes, my sister sent me pictures she took of two people dressed up as the Blue and Red Crewmates from Among Us and told me they were "us." In order to preserve their privacy and my dignity, I will not be sharing the photos with you.

        ²As in the 1580s, when the song was composed.