By Peter McShane ‘23

After a quick and easy day at school, I was so excited just to sit back and watch a scary movie because it was Halloween.

“Hi mom, how was your day?”

“It was great. What do you plan on doing tonight?”

“I’m just going to watch a movie in the basement if that’s alright.”

“Oh no you’re not. You’re passing out the candy.”

With complete distress on my face, I gave my mom a nod. I never liked passing out candy because it felt like a neverending cycle of little kids breathing their candy breath on me and asking for more candy.

As more and more trick-or-treaters started knocking on my door, I started to notice all the greed some of these older kids were displaying on their faces as they were just looking at the candy bowl. Some of them weren’t even saying the classic “trick-or-treat” when I opened the door. They would just peek into the bowl and hold their bag out, which got me thinking – how can I have fun with this?

This led me to going into my basement and grabbing my fishing rod and my dog’s toy that looked identical to a squirrel. As I connected the squirrel to the hook, I caught myself doing an evil, little grin and thought that maybe I was too old to be doing this. Well, that thought didn’t last very long.

The sun was almost fully down, and it was the time of the night when all of the older kids, who were probably around 14-years-old, started to come around. I put the bowl of candy on the front porch, which my mom told me not to do, and headed straight up to the window in my bedroom that was right above the front door. It was time.

It took about five minutes for the first group of kids to come by and notice the bowl.

One of them said, “Let’s go, let’s grab all of it.”

As they started running up my stairs, I lowered the squirrel right into the candy bowl, and they all freaked out. One of the kids twisted his ankle on a step as he was running away, and all of his friends just ran as far as they could. I sort of felt bad because he was separated from his friends because he was limping, but he was also seconds away from taking the whole bowl and running. I told myself I would do this just one more time.

Hearing lots of noise down the block, I looked over and noticed a group of about 15 kids. While they were all running toward the bowl to see who could get it first, I noticed that my neighbor, Charlie, was towards the back of the group. As I lowered the squirrel right into the bowl, they all ran off just like the first group except for my neighbor.

Charlie said, “Nice try, bozo.” Then he ran off while throwing the bowl into his bag.

After about 10 seconds of silence, I finally laughed to myself. I knew someone was going to get away with the bowl, but the fact that I knew the person made it so much more gut-wrenching. My mom was really frustrated that I left the bowl on the porch, but at least I know I won’t be asked to hand out the candy next year!