The day starts right: all misty and grey……oooohh.……and Sal comes out in the morning, “Did you clump around in the closet just now?”

“No. Been sittin’ here. Why?”

“I heard something big moving around in the closet!”

“Well, open the door and check…..”

“Are you CRAZY!!! What if it is a bear?”

“Fine! I’ll check.” And, I get up and open the closet that has only one access – from inside our bedroom. I wanna see the bear that can hide in the closet but who also sneaked past us in the night to do so. And I open the door.

“See anything?”

“Nothing………bit of bear scat is all…..”

And so our scary day has begun. I have never been a big fan of All Hallowed Eve or Halloween. Not even when I was a kid. Too many stale handfuls of popcorn and bare apples! And some of them reputedly had razor blades in ’em! And too much of that cheap orange triangle candy that tasted like wax. In my neighbourhoods (‘hoods), the kids Trick or Treated alone or in packs o’kids but parents were not all backed up in the dark on the sidewalk. It was just kids. The scariest thing for us was the bigger kids all backed up in the dark behind us waiting to steal the good candy.

I only began to like Hallowe’en when I could give out the candy. The little ones were adorable and usually more than a bit confused about the whole thing. They were the only sensible ones.

Every year some parent or teen set themselves, their dog or their neighbourhood on fire in some creative way. In the latter days, it was by way of cheap off-shore fireworks. I think that is when the Chinese government realized they could wage war on another country by strategically using cheap exports.

Kids do not trick or treat much living OTG. Too far between houses. Too wet between islands. Too many really big kids dressed as bears. It must seem like a veritable wild place to a new kid. “I ain’t going out there! Are you mad!”

But this year, we have so many new parents and kids (at least another four this year) that a small group is going to ‘inner-circle’ trick or treat around a small cluster of full-on family houses. And then they will all gather later at the old misty ‘Blockhouse’ remote and deep in the forest. The blockhouse is surrounded by a small orchard. If there is mist, I wouldn’t go. WAY TOO SCARY! One of the island cougars lives near there. And I mean the feline variety.

“Maybe we should venture out to the blockhouse this year. It would be fun to scare the little kids. More fun to scare the parents.”

“How would we do that?”

“Still got our old full-bear costumes?”