WHAT MY HALLOWEEN WAS LIKE

Actually I had a terrific Halloween. I didn't make a "Tunnel of fear" this year, but I made lots of paper witches and goblins which I put out on the porch, and I got lots of really cute little kids at the door.


By far the most common costume was Snow White (above). There were zillions of plump little Snow Whites on my steps!

More than a few adult Snow Whites (above) too.


That's the "sexy" Little Red Riding Hood costume above. Boy, those "sexy" costumes sold big this year! I didn't actually see any Riding Hoods tonight but I show it anyway for the edification of my male readers.

Forgive me; I digress.

Now I'm a pretty good keeper of Halloween. That's because I realize that the whole kid year revolves around Halloween and Christmas. I don't know any other holiday where you can make so many people feel good with such a small investment of time and money. But....I confess that even I, Halloween enthusiast that I am, had one big lapse.

My name is eternally written in the Book Of Infamy, because one horrible year, maybe ten years ago, I darkened the house and pretended I wasn't home. I can't remember why, I just know that I'd been been feeling rotten and curmudgeonly all month. Maybe like Scrooge, I reasoned that kids should be working in textile mills and eating gruel for dinner on dirty benches. It was the winter of my discontent.

When the night came I parked my car a block away, so people would think I was out carousing. I darkened the entire house, which was devoid of decoration. It was a moonless night, and the trees and shrubs on either side of my lawn kept the house as dark and black as I've ever seen it.

The only light inside was the light from the TV which I kept so dim and nearly silent that I could hardly make out was going on...and even that was shut up behind closed drapes. It sucked to sit there in the dark like that, but I figured that I was at least safe from trick or treaters.

Well, to make a long story short, I wasn't safe. Millions of kids knocked on my door. I don't even know how they found the door without tripping in the dark. They even knocked on my window, with me sitting only a few feet away! I could hear them talking about me, wondering what happened to me.

Every new group had one kid who was an expert at ferreting out hiding adults. Just when the group would be ready to give up and leave, this kid would catch a stray photon from the TV and bring everybody back. I had to listen to whole debates about myself.

One line in particular stands out in my mind. I heard a mother talking to her kids as she approached my house with a flashlight, and she said "Wait'll you see this house. He always does something for Halloween, wait and see." She knocked and knocked, then I heard disappointed groans from the kids. Man, that hurt.

The next day seemed normal enough on the surface. None of the neighbors said anything insulting, but I could feel an icy radiation coming from them. It took six months for people to talk to me normally again.

So I'm a faithful keeper of Halloween again...not only because I love the holiday, which is so rich in color and imagination...but because I felt the lash administered to those wretches who fail to keep it.