Trick or Treat

I remember Trick or Treating one Halloween night with my little brother, Joey.  My friends and I were enjoying ourselves telling stories to scare Joey.  At first he laughed, but after a while, the laughter turned to nervous chuckling.  That only encouraged us to tease him more.

“Look out Joey.  A bat was trying to get in your hair.” 

“You better keep up with us Joey, because if the boogey man jumps out to grab us, we’re running fast.”

The fun continued until we got to old Mr. Compton’s house.  “Joey, this house is haunted.  Be careful.”

We rang the doorbell. 

We heard creepy music.

 The door  s-l-o-w-l-y  creaked open. 

Old Mr. Compton stood before us and we shouted, “Trick or Treat!  Trick or Treat!”

…and we opened our pillow case trick or treat bags.

Old Mr. Compton laughed, and laughed, and laughed,-- slapping his thighs and laughing, -- throwing his head back and laughing, so much that his false teeth fell out of his mouth right into Joey’s trick or treat pillow case.

Silence.

Then Joey screamed, dropped his pillow case, and took off like a devil in an exorcism.

Trick or treat.

Halloween Storm

At first it looked pretty. It was just frost on the pumpkin. Then the leaves were encased in diamond settings.

But then it turned ugly. Those crystallize leaves weighed too heavily on their branches. Branches snapped. Trees split. There's a tree on the Town Common that split evenly in thirds--center, to the right, and to the left. Some parts of the town looked liked a tornado went through it. A few streets have telephone poles pulled down by trees falling on their wires. Live wires on the street have caused a lot of problems: no electricity, no school, and no trick or treating. You can't have kids walking in the dark with no street lights, or even lights from houses, and accidentally stepping on one of those live wires. So trick or treat has been postponed for Friday.

And I'm exhausted. Since we had no electricity, I had no alarm clock. I kept waking up during the night to check the time on my cell phone. I didn't trust its alarm because I had never used it before. Finally, one of the times I check, I thought the time said almost five o'clock. Close enough to get up. I usually get up at 5:30 AM. It was as cold as a freezer in the house. You could hang meat. So I took a nice, hot, long shower. Afterwards, I checked the time and it was just past four o'clock. So when I got up it was only three something. !!!!!!!!

I was wide awake.

I decided to take advantage of the quiet time and read the Office of Readings, besides pray Morning Prayer. I even had time to pray a Rosary.

I would have enjoyed the time spent alone with God, were it not for the cold. But after two days of no electricity, we just now got the electric power back on. Thanks be to God. This Halloween storm turned out to be a "trick" and also a "treat."