Ain't Misbehaving Much

When I was growing up in the Mid-Jurassic Period, my friends and I looked forward to wearing costumes and going from house to house on trick or treat night. We enjoyed doing this every Halloween until the year I was in the ninth grade. That year, we got a lecture instead of treats. A woman at the first house we went to yelled at us, saying we were too old for trick or treat. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she said before telling us to go home.

That woman took all the fun out of trick or treat night. But, even though she turned us away, we never even thought about playing tricks on her. We didn’t go to any other houses. We were afraid that those people would also turn us away. We went home empty handed, figuring that our trick or treat years were over.

They weren't. Sort of.

The next year, my friends and I came up with an idea to have what we considered a little harmless Halloween fun. We decided to do some window waxing, but we wanted to make it easy for people to clean up. We knew that removing wax from windows was a chore; so we “borrowed” bars of soap from home. About 8 p.m., we went to check out the window-waxing possibilities on the main street of a neighboring town. (Yeah, in retrospection, that was sort of dumb.) That town was larger than the one where we lived. We figured we wouldn’t be recognized if we were caught in the act.

While my friends scouted out their territories, I claimed a spot in front of a TV repair shop that had a Closed sign in the window. I could see a light at the back of the shop, behind an open door that led to what was, most likely, office space. Probably left the light on to discourage thieves, I thought.

I started spinning soap circles all over the window. A few minutes later, I glanced up and saw a man standing in the back of the shop. He was laughing, but I freaked out anyway. I dropped the soap and took off. I found my friends, and we got the heck out of there.

From then on, I behaved. Well, at least on Halloween.