There’s always one unexpected horror at Halloween: I’ve learned to expect it. (When looking back on the event. Which probably doesn’t really count at all.)
My lesson this year was: Don’t open the door to just anyone, simply because it’s Halloween. (The best lessons are the most obvious ones.)
So… it was getting rather late. Halloween was over, for us. I had already gathered in the decorations from outside, including all the lights. Meanwhile my children were happily elsewhere, doing whatever children urgently do when there are jobs like that to be done.
When there was a tap on the front door.
Just one.
An usually quiet one.
Ooh.
I was curious.
(And no, I did not think of what happens to cats.)
So I opened the door.
Before me, there wasn’t yet another fairly adorable, short, very noisy Halloween creature.
Just a gang of six or seven huge teenage boys: all in normal clothes; all silent; all staring.
To be honest, it wasn’t a moment filled with any noticeable fun.
Stress can lead to surprising creativity. I hoped that words might rescue me: I merely needed to find the right ones.
I did my best to recall advice from anywhere. ‘The SAS Survival Handbook’ by John Lofty Wiseman seemed an appropriate choice, for the challenge I was facing.
“You are only as sharp as your knife” was what sprang first to my mind.
This was not helpful!
I did not want to even think of knives, thank you.
Including our plastic Halloween ones.
Because now I was feeling extremely ‘unsharp’, as well as other unlovely and inconvenient things.
A more suitable quote was required, and urgently.
“Calmness and confidence in yourself will inspire the confidence and cooperation of others.”
Yes! That was more like it! Calmness and confidence! I was going to give out positivity and sweets!
As soon as I offered sweets, the teenagers became wildly animated and completely focussed on their task.
What a relief!
Sixty or seventy fingers pecked furiously at the bowl.
It was like feeding corn to a big family of crazy chickens.
It was wonderful and dreadful, wonderful and dreadful, wonderful and dreadful.
Just like Halloween itself.
But the sweets were disappearing, fast.
I wondered what else I could give then?
I did not dare to offer the apples or rice cakes with faces on.
So I enquired if they would, perhaps, like to keep the bowl that the sweets came in?
And, yes! It turns out that they did! They really, really wanted the bowl!
Then I asked if in that case they would like to have the lid that came with it too?
(There was a nice, blue, matching lid which fitted on reasonably well.)
And, yes, actually! They did!
What joy it was for me to finally close the door on that merry gang of sugar-addicts.
I became almost fond of them as they ran away.
John Wiseman says that a person is only as sharp as their knife. That's an intriguing statement.
But I am more interested in happiness than sharpness, I think.
I wonder if a person is only as happy as whatever and whoever they choose to run away with?
It could be that friends and sweets are as good as it gets?
Especially if they have a plastic bowl and matching lid?
Yes, I think this is a possibility.
I might try it one day.
