But the position of ‘bad girl’ meant that you had to be a complete amalgamation of all these standard roles and then top it off with ‘daring’. Bad girl ‘daring’ incorporated such bravado, insight and self-knowledge that it couldn’t be pulled off by just anybody. You had to have all the tools and know how to use them. This was a job for a professional.

The part of me that wasn’t totally intimidated by Virginia was admiring of her finely tuned blend of male and female attributes. But make no mistake about it, she was insanely attractive (by school boy standards) and I bet if you took a poll of honest classmate responders you’d find almost unanimous agreement on that point, regardless of social standing.

I will be one of those honest responders and admit that I just couldn’t take my eyes off her, being all fascinated, attracted and repelled in one high RPM psycho-Cuisinart. To me, she was one of the most compelling girls in the entire school and I was dying to know what background fueled her attitude but would never have asked or, for that matter, even dared talk to her.

One day I realized that talking wasn’t even necessary to get Virginia’s attention because she was working on all sensory levels.

When I reached the 9th grade (the top of the junior high food chain in my district) I qualified for the job of ‘hall monitor’ and I had the authority to clear out the hallways during class times. I liked the authority bit and I loved just hanging out in the hallway pretending to know how to handle the miscreants who skipped class, checking hall passes and reporting those who flaunted my authority. O.K., to be honest, I just liked hanging out in the hallway. There was actually little difference between me, the law, and them, the scofflaws.

Anyway, strolling down the hall one day during verboten hours was Virginia, doing her bad girl thing and just daring me to shut her down and I froze like one of those deer along the side of the highway and, just like those deer, I couldn’t look away. I stared a hole right through her and she stared me right back down. But she saw something else in my stare…a crack in my armor and she wasted no time exploiting my weakness.

She walked straight toward me, stopped and said: “I bet you want to f*#k me don’t you?”

I couldn’t even speak. I didn’t know whether to treasure the titillating moment or run home and hide.

Words were chaotically flying all over my brain and I couldn’t land a single one. I just kept staring and wondering how in the hell did she intuit my impure hormonal schoolboy thoughts when I never even uttered a single word to her. How, how, how? And what girl, in adolescent vernacular, talks like that?!?! What was going on here?

I was struck dumb and my silence instantly became her hall pass and her mission was accomplished. She was free to roam the halls and I was stunned into inaction by her two-ton one-liner.

I believe that was the day I became aware that the fairer sex was also the smarter sex; certainly the craftier sex. These girls had powers that went beyond the comprehension of the simpletons that I hung out with. Boys were crude and manipulative but they were taking wild, crazy swings, hoping that something landed.

Girls? They were like surgeons with scalpels and Virginia was, at our school, chief of surgery.

Yes, this Father’s Day felt different. Even realizing that as an adult you’ve got to make certain choices in your favor and learn what wasn’t given to you in the formative years, there have been hurdles I’ve never been able to quite climb over. And yet, while I’m never at a loss in describing the shortcomings of my father(s) (the good as well), I’ve apparently come to some sort of emotional understanding with the Day.

Maturity has never been one of my strengths and I suspect that the severe lag time in that development was probably the failure of a father figure to guide me when I was younger and banging around trying to figure out how to be an adult. But this year maybe there’s a shift in the scenario. There’s no living father figure in my life and I’m becoming more and more removed from that loss. I’m sizing up the situation and have every hope that I’ll reach full emotional and intellectual maturity before I hit 70, a definite upgrade from my previous estimate of never.

But there is a calm, a sort of ceasefire that’s allowing me to think and talk about it without feeling that desperate missing link that I’ve felt so many times before. Yes, there is a sadness that I will always carry with me, but it appears to be walking beside me rather than pulling me along by the nose. I don’t know why this is…time…fatigue…circumstance? It just is, apparently, what it is and now I’m the only one left standing.

So, happy Father’s Day to all the men out there that are able to think and act beyond their own limitations and contribute to another being in a way that enriches their life…you deserve to be celebrated. It doesn’t happen everyday, you know.

I don’t really care what these emotional vampires do with their lives as long as it doesn’t involve the manipulation of other people, namely me or my loved ones. I will admit fully to being as much of a neurotic train wreck as the next person but I don’t believe my failings should be used as a weapon.  However, there are those in my surrounding family that do, and I can’t stomach it any longer. It’s been building for years and, as the calendar seemingly picks up speed, I get more repulsed by the same old tired game.

Besides my worthy character traits, I can be sullen, sarcastic and a general curmudgeon but if you ever catch me using any of that to twist you into a pretzel you have my permission to apply a swift kick across the head.

In an extreme way it reminds me of the feeling I have whenever I read about a combination homicide/suicide. Instead of the transgressor alleviating the world and themselves of an unmanageable existence, they need that one last desperate move of ultimate control that they were unable to exercise over themselves when they were alive, so they take innocents to hell with them.

That, in a much more passive form, is what some of my family members do. They can’t manage themselves so they apply management to others by clever means of manipulation. I call that ‘dicking’ with someone and, I don’t know about you but, I hate that with the passion of a thousand suns since it results in a simple interaction being mangled and distorted and that results in hours of wasted time fending them off.

I realize that the fictional character, Don Quixote, was relatively delusional but, that taken out of the equation, the pure act of fighting a windmill is an excellent analogy since it involves trying to smite the constant ‘spin’ and all of that flailing away expends tremendous amounts of energy that could be better utilized elsewhere.

So what is it with the desperate need to ‘dick’ with people…to turn some of life’s most benign negotiations into an act of domination?

AND NOW FOR A MORE DIRECT COMMUNIQUE SHOULD THE OFFENDERS EVER READ THIS:

What the hell is wrong with you?

Do you have any idea what a pox you are? Whatever people say to your face, believe me when I tell you that no one, except those with your same mental illness, like this and they wish you would go away and mind your own business.

At 58, I’ve got an entirely different perspective on things and it’s a primary reason why parents and offspring see life so differently. But I believe that if children could somehow feel, in any temporary way, what life will eventually dish out, physically and psychologically, they would find an easier  generational commonality and gain some valuable perspective on the fine art of living.

I’m beginning to really experience the wheels coming off and the train jumping the tracks and, frankly, it’s taking with it some of my last remaining cool mojo and that’s nothing if not a sobering alert that stuff is wearing out. On the other hand I’m, at this precise moment in time, almost perfectly straddling youth and old age. I’m still playing basketball with guys 30 years younger than me and I’m being told by an orthopedic specialist that my knees are a wreck and will, eventually, have to be condemned out of concern for arthritis and years of pounding and abuse.

This is a weird place to be. I can’t say that I’m fully embracing advancing age because I’m not, but I’m not fooled by the illusion of youth anymore either. Is this what Joni Mitchell meant by “I’ve looked at life from both sides now”? I’m not sure, but that’s what’s happening to me. I’m having to become an advocate for both my youthful side and my aged side, both at the same time. I can’t emphasize how much of a weird place this is to be.

I’ve got the psychology of a 16 year old and the knees of a 90 year old. Stuff happens to me now that I’ve never even seen or heard of and my cries of “what the hell now?” are mostly exasperated pleas for mercy. I’ve got crap happening that I can’t even put down in print! I’ve heard it remarked that aging is not for sissies and it is so true because if you don’t decide to ignore the things that bog you down and carry on in defiance, then you’ll be in a wheelchair in about 5 minutes. This is where youthful obliviousness comes in handy because it is that bravado that keeps us cooking.

So, I have an approach that I’m using that I hope will serve me until I am no longer, and it involves a little measured prudence with a little kamikaze. Sound dangerous? Not really, because the greater danger would be sitting on my sorry ass tabulating my infirmities. Now that sounds dangerous, so I have no intention of doing that.

Anyhow, my formula for future success is 1) let only the severity of pain dictate what I will and will not physically do, 2) ignore the pain, 3) make good friends with ibuprofen and, finally, 4) leave all pride parked at the door since it won’t be needed.

Have a nice day…

They hide things from me that they think I shouldn’t know or create attributes for themselves that they don’t possess so that they might appear noble. They do this in the name of St. Coping; patron saint of head games. But all it does is cause me confusion because their actions do not, like a badly dubbed Japanese film, match their language. I see their mouths moving but little of what is said seems to correlate to reality and, more often than not, leaves me wondering if these people haven’t actually invented bullshit.

With a few exceptions, my own family is like that, my wife’s family is like that and, not to let myself off the hook, I’m sometimes like that.

Speaking for myself, when I make crap up to suit a need, I do it because it supposedly helps me dodge some uncomfortable circumstance that I can’t deal with. I do it because the truth is confrontational and hard to handle and makes me feel like entering the witness protection program.

But that feeling of flight betrays the benefit of truth because, although painful initially, it’s way less time consuming and energy sucking than constantly manipulating the facts of the matter so you come out looking good on the other end.

I know this is true because my wife says it is.

Alright, I’m being cute here but it’s true because that is how she tries to live everyday and while she might not have a perfect track record, she adheres to the truth when it matters the most; when it’s necessary for healthy living and that’s when it should count the most. When it’s crunch time, she picks up the ‘truthteller’ standard and carries it fearlessly into battle and a lot of people are not going to like you for that.

How crazy does that sound…’people are not going to like you for that’.

No, my brother, when the truth is not welcomed you will see all sorts of flailing and bailing, denying and lying, bobs and weaves, and every manner of avoidance a person can conjure up. The more intelligent, the more sophisticated the ruse but, in the end, it’s the same nonsense.

Our neuroses take on such a powerful presence that we lose perspective on the reality of what is before us. While we’re massaging our damaged psyches we totally lose sight of actual good, for ourselves and others, that could be done if only we’d give up this mental chain-gang labor.

And it’s not only others that fact-shifters are working on…it’s themselves and it is immensely hard to convince yourself of a fiction and then sustain it for ridiculously long periods of time. Pure, back-breaking labor.

Dysfunctional families do this all the time. It’s their bowl of Wheaties; their energy drink; their psychotropic of choice and I’m beginning to have strong feelings of repulsion for the whole thing. While they’re avoiding reality, I want to avoid them.

So, here’s my pact with anyone I’m related to. If we’ve got a mutual problem and it takes a village to figure it out and you make yourself a worthless paper weight in the middle of negotiations, stop talking to me or interacting with me because you’re nothing but a distraction and I’ve got no use for you.

You know who you are…or maybe you’re so delusional, you don’t.

My dog was involved in the entire mythology of Santa and if I was going to still believe in Santa I was also going to have to buy into Santa’s otherworldly ability to talk to animals and that meant accepting my dad’s (father #2) assertion that my German Shepherd, Pal, spoke to Santa about me often and that I should consider that in any future behavior.

For me, the behavioral issue was no big deal but the fact that my dog spoke to Santa was a really attractive possibility and something I wanted to be true because it was cool and gave me new found respect for Pal. On television there was Mr. Ed (the talking horse) communicating with his owner, Wilbur, but this thing with Pal was the real deal and I wasn’t afraid to share it.

And, of course, I was met with resistance from two principle sources.

First, there was fourth grade classmate, Eugene, who took great umbrage with my story, feeling it necessary to debunk Santa and my dog all in one fell swoop. This only strengthened my resolve to stand behind my reality because it had to be true and the only way to cement that truth was to sell it with all the conviction I could muster. So, I sold it, sold it and sold it some more until Eugene threatened to beat me up if I kept on, which created an immediate impasse and an end to all future discussions.

Hell with it, I’d keep it to myself.

But I didn’t, because the next day at my baby sitter’s house (I stayed there during the day when my parents were at work), I let loose with the same story and everyone involved said, in other words, that I was full of shit. “Your dog can’t talk to Santa Claus!”, said her son, Gene. “Yes he can…my dad told me”, said I, and so we went around and around until Gene’s mother sided with her son and confirmed that dogs couldn’t talk to people and my dad was just telling a tale.

Now, here’s exactly what I thought and felt during all of this and I still feel pretty much the same way.

Intellectually, it seemed like a monstrous long-shot that my dog could talk to Santa Claus but I wanted to believe it, I was 9 years old and, obviously, wanted to suck every last ounce out of the legend before dull reality set in. The talking dog aspect fit the paradigm perfectly. Santa was already talking to his reindeer and they all seemed to understand what he was talking about so what would be far-fetched about Santa talking to dogs? This is Santa, and Santa carries with him some serious magic mojo so it was all working for me. If I believed in Santa, I’d have to believe that he could talk to my dog.

Now you expect kids your own age to be a little brutal with their righteous truth and I could forgive that but when Gene’s mother and other family members, as a group, shot down my story I thought, what a bunch of assholes, ripping the illusionary joy right out of my head because they had to be right.

I don’t know why someone would do that to a 9 year-old but I do know that, unlike today’s ‘fast-lane’ kids, there’s no reason to make a mad dash for the mediocrity and very un-magical reality that is adulthood. In fact, if I could put my knowledge on hold and buy into that whole Santa thing again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

How would I know this? Did I ever go in his house? No. Did I ever meet his parents? No. Did I even know if he lived with his parents? No. But then I didn’t have to because Raymond carried the ‘air’ of neglect on his person each and every day he came to school.

I knew him from Kindergarten on and was alternatively repelled by the constant body odor and dental disaster and sorry that he had, apparently, no one to guide him in a better direction, making sure he had clean clothes to go to school in. To make matters even stranger, Raymond was like a 40 year old in a 12 year old body, having facial stubble that none of us were to have for many years to come. Combine that with greasy, unwashed hair and you could see why Raymond was socially marginalized.

Even so, I tried to see what was at the heart of every kid, not just their immediate grooming habits or lack of. So I tried to hang out with him a little bit, doing the nothing that we would often do. We had some whackadoodle idea that we could build a rocket out of these large cylinders we’d found but, of course, that was an immediate dead end when it became obvious there was no way to power the rocket and even if we could find an engine lying around we wouldn’t know what to do with it. So the cylinders stayed cylinders and, outside of a brief fist fight near our lilac bushes, Raymond and I didn’t spend too much more quality time together.

But for about a week in 1964, Raymond became the guy to know as we hit 8th grade and hormonal chaos. Getting a glimpse of the female anatomy was of interest to a lot of the guys and most of us still hadn’t seen the real deal so there was much false boasting and wild conjecture as to what was what and what went where, little of it probably accurate. Then Raymond came to school with clear documentation to put the rumors to rest and pretty much flaunted his prize possession.

Raymond had a Playboy Magazine centerfold carefully folded and stuffed in his jeans and at some point during social studies I caught wind of this revelation and immediately worked at getting on Raymond’s good side so I could have a look. This meant I was going to have to do a major ‘suck up’ since the last time we’d hung out I was punching him in the head in my backyard. Fortunately, I’ve never been one who loses sight of the greater cause and so, by the end of the school day, I ‘borrowed’ the centerfold.

At the time, to a 13 year old boy, this was like winning the lottery and I carried it with great reverence because this was the anatomical tutorial I’d waited for and my hormones were already having a hoedown in my pants at the prospects of checking this thing out. I’d had no real sex education, either in school or the lame attempt by my dad to explain the phenomena, so this was going to have to suffice and I’d fill in the blanks as I went along.

For some, mostly women, this will sound like a simple prurient interest but for those of my kind, it was a seminal moment that I shall remember in the same way as the Kennedy assassination or 9/11. I’ll always have the day, the centerfold, the excitement, carefully etched into my memory.

Too many years have passed and most of those newly-minted hormones have set sail for more youthful harbor, but on that day Raymond delivered the pictorial proof of all we’d imagined and the party was on…

So, when the fall leaves dropped to the ground by the bushel, we raked them up on the curbside into a tidy mound and set them on fire; a blazing heap that chucked out smoke like a runaway barbecue pit. Oddly, the expected acrid cloud was rather pleasant, with an aroma similar to a campfire.

Multiply that single act with designated leaf burning days and you had what amounted to a neighborhood bonfire with nearly every curbside contributing to the fog that spread across the adjacent streets and filled the air with the unmistakable smell of fall.

It’s the smell that, in the sensory memory of those who experienced it, will always be associated with the season. Leaf burning was something that brought neighbors outside to talk and kibitz with one another; a giant social event with a 5-alarm ambiance and a role for everyone to play.

Children did a lot of the raking, if for nothing else than the payoff of diving headfirst into the pile, so it was a chore of joy that was so good we had to do it repeatedly because our leafy playground would end up spread far and wide as if we’d never raked in the first place. At some juncture, the adults took over the operation and the fires commenced. Leaf herders with a constant watch over their fallen flock had to make sure the fire stayed within the confines of reasonable although me and most of my little pyromaniac friends were just prodding the herders into bigger and brighter blazes.

Before there were multiple electronic distractions to dumb down social events for kids, sanctioned fun with fire and smoke was something to look forward to. It plays into every irresistible urge kids have to control the potentially uncontrollable, so what could be better than an entire neighborhood flickering at dusk?

“Hey kids, let’s go outside and play with matches!!”

We weren’t even content with our own fires so we made the ‘flammable tour’, roaming the rest of the neighborhood to check out the fires of our buddies on other streets.

Now, to be honest, this wasn’t a risk-free activity because there was the outside chance that a pant leg might catch on fire or somebody’s house was a little too downwind but those were acceptable hazards to be dealt with if necessary. In practice, the only regular danger we encountered was leaping into the pre-burned pile only to discover some kid-maiming surprise, like a rake or other mystery object.  But that’s part of the charm of the unknown and if you were going to get squeamish about a rock in the side of the ribs or a ground steak upside the head, then leaf pile jumping wasn’t for you. We really didn’t weigh the negatives of inhaling tons of toxic fumes because, well, we just didn’t because we were as oblivious as the 1950′s sometimes were. If you didn’t consider the disasterous effects of 3 packs of Lucky Strikes a day then you were hardly phased by pile of burning leaves.

At its peak, the haze just hung in the trees, like one of those World War II movie battlefields covered with artillery smoke. It completely changed the character of the neighborhood and made it, in an odd way, sort of an exotic getaway. I always loved it when the familiarity of home morphed into something else, whether it was 10 feet of snow, an ominous sky before a tornado or, as in this case, scads of little bonfires.

For environmental and safety reasons, nearly all cities have put a stop to that kind of thing and now you see the leaves raked and stuffed in those biodegradable paper bags, lined up neatly on the curb, waiting for trucks to pick them up.

It’s probably a good thing we didn’t have those back then because I’m sure we would have set the bags on fire too. Sorry, Smokey.

After years of assessing my strengths and weaknesses, there’s no doubt I’m a highly distractable person. What would that be in today’s coded vernacular…HDP? I’m sure if I were in high school now, psychologists would be breaking it all down into a neat little prescription to be filled at the pharmacy but all it really boils down to for me is an inability to focus sometimes in the midst of surrounding activity. When I’m creating something (this story for instance) and the phone rings or someone calls to me, it’s like one of those near-death accounts where, on your way to the glorious light, you come reeling back to mundane life. It’s jarring and causes an automatic restart.

It’s why my creativity has always thrived in the wee hours of the morning. I like being awake when most people aren’t. It’s like being in one of those sci-fi flicks where the guy realizes that the entire human race has been wiped off the planet and he’s the only one left and he’s got the run of the roost, but unlike the sci-fi guy I’m comforted to know that the isolation is temporary and, eventually, the rest of the world will get out of bed and I won’t die alone.

I’ve been this way since I was a kid and after this many years it is an easily definable part of my character. When I was young, if school hours permitted (and sometimes even when they didn’t) I’d be up at 2am doing virtually anything; reading, writing, making model cars, writing songs, studying the jokes on comedy albums, creating lists of anything that came into my head and sometimes I’d just sit and think of shit.

It may sound like ‘thinking of shit’ is an empty activity but that is far from true because most of my best ideas are formulated in this vacuum of uncluttered time. It’s in this time that my brain becomes well-ordered and everything makes sense in a way that the cacophony of day to day activities do not. I admire those who retain clarity while standing on a teeter board, juggling 4 balls and reciting the Gettysburg Address. I just don’t seem to be one of them since all I want to do is get really good with the teeter board and then move on to the juggling.

My wife, on the other hand, is a marvel of powerful thinking in the eye of the storm. With a teeter board under each foot and a bucket full of balls flying at her, she can quickly breakdown the situation and reign it in like Einstein herding relativity into an understandable theory. It’s amazing to watch her in full operational gear.

Now, this is not to say that I’m not quick since in my profession as an entertainer I have to stand in front of groups of people everyday and corral an audience with off the cuff comedy and a perfect flow of music. In the midst of what most people might consider a frightening chaos, I’m as clear as a laser and know exactly what to do and when to do it.

But that’s a controlled environment (when I control it) that I’ve become skilled at over 4 decades of repetition and practice and doesn’t quite have the randomness of the majority of daily encounters. That’s what separates the thinkers from the sinkers and it’s why I do my best thinking when the bats are getting their exercise. Life just sort of gets put on ‘pause’ while I get some work done.

There are only a couple of other comparable times where there is perfect clarity and that’s in the morning when I’m just coming out of my nightly coma, before I set one foot on the floor. I’m at my organizational best at that very moment…lining up the days events, assigning myself a series of necessary tasks and planning a well-appointed day. I only run into trouble when I get out of bed where the quandary of order becomes an issue. Up until that time I’m the best secretary I’ve ever had. Too bad the secretary ends up being a temp.

The other time is in the shower. The shower is like an isolation tank where your only task is to bath, which leaves it wide open for thought. Nothing but you, falling water and an open mind. I have come up with some great stuff in the shower and if I were wise I’d install a waterproof, digital recorder on the wall.

I think my DNA is hard-wired this way and as much as I struggle to make it work more like my wife’s I know it never will be. Getting older is worthless for running faster and jumping higher but for knowing what you’re good or bad at; it’s the perfect clarifier.

I am what I’ve always been; a very, very, very poor man’s Stephen Hawking, a sharp intellect that only comes out after midnight and is this close to being interviewed by Anne Rice.

It wasn’t just a particular street or area that opened up its doors but every street and nearly every door. As long as you could keep walking was how much bounty you came home with and we didn’t use conventional bags or those plastic pumpkins because that limited the size and poundage of what we could carry. Instead, the large-scale operators like myself used pillow cases. By the end of the evening, if you did your job properly, you looked more like a candy hoarding Santa Clause with a full pillow case tossed over the shoulder.

There was something so communal about the event, so many children out there with one common goal, that no one was really alone and although the youngest children still had a parent on hand, this was primarily a no-parent function where everyone watched over everybody else. Potential perpetrators, if there were any lurking, were relegated to the sidelines due to excessive foot traffic.

My friends and I used to do a geographical sweep that always involved note comparison. The protocol for running into another group of kids was an exchange of information about areas they had been in which you had not and vice versa. What were they giving out? What house had the best stuff? Was it possible to go back twice? What houses to avoid and what was just a waste of time. You ran into so many children that it was like having an advanced social networking reconnaissance.

Unlike today’s TOT environment, the most sought after and heavily traded information had to do with treats that were made by homeowners; things like popcorn balls and candy apples. The folks that usually made these things knew their craft and loved what they were doing. They’d make the stuff from scratch and the treats were, by and large, fantastic. Treats like this were coveted because any kid could walk into a store and buy a candy bar but homemade fare was a random Halloween delicacy largely unavailable but for one day a year and you had to canvas a neighborhood to find it.

I don’t remember exactly when the homemade Halloween food scare took hold but it shut down a valuable mom and pop industry that had thrived for a very long time. Exposed as an urban myth (with no documented evidence to the contrary), the ‘razor blade in the apple’ story not only stopped the flow of candy apples but, for a period of time,  it virtually put a halt to the tradition of Halloween, proving once again that we are a very skittish and hyper-reactive people.

But back when I was walking the streets (should I rephrase that?), that bag got heavier and heavier and eventually dictated how long you stayed in the game before the strain on your shoulder forced you home. Having a bag full of candy that was three times the size of your head was a much sought after accomplishment, so most of the time we suffered for our diligence.

When you finally lugged that sack of sugar into your house it was like hitting the finish line in the Boston Marathon but, unlike the Marathon, the exercise was incomplete until you dumped out everything onto the floor and took inventory. It wasn’t uncommon to have an inordinate amount of Smarties but, then again, that’s hardly the worst thing that can happen to you. Chocolate was the goal though, and you needed plenty of chocolate to call the evening a success, but what put you in the upper echelon of TOTers was the ‘homemade’ tally…lovingly referred to on our block as the ‘good crap’.

After inventory there was the customary trading portion of the event and the living room floor became the New York Stock Exchange and you might either enhance or downgrade your initial investment. In the end, though, it was win, win all around because you’d had a great night of bumping into friends, getting exorcise, half-freezing your ass off, unraveling the great neighborhood treasure map and coming home with enough candy to kill 50 kids.

It’s a shame what happened to Halloween. It was a magnificent piece of childhood entertainment, screwed up by malcontents, weirdos and wild rumor, never to be experienced the same way again. Even though it has made a modest comeback in recent years, it’s just not the same kinetic experience that had us looking forward to the night like it was Christmas Eve. Trust has leaked out of our society and parents are assuming that there are hordes of evil beings just waiting to scoop up their offspring. Beyond that, there’s an actual theory that suggests just walking around in a costume, especially a mask, increases the risk of falling down and premature death by as much as 4 times. Maybe they’re right and the scaled down version of Halloween was necessary because we live in more dangerous times, or kids are clumsier, I don’t know.

Whatever happened though, it’s a shame that children can’t experience the night with the same wild abandon that we did, in neighborhoods that looked like New York City streets at rush hour, because that was some awesome, cool, shit.