Remember When Contest Entry - Halloween

         I must have been ten or eleven. I was invited to one of my sister's cute friend's house. She must have been twelve or thirteen. Her family was throwing a huge Halloween party, complete with haunted house, music, dancing, and a colossal pinata in the back yard. So, those four or five hours felt like four or five days. Especially once it got rolling.

         Before this, I never thought much of Halloween. It was simply a harvest season: the time of year when adults harvest corn, and kids harvest candy corn. But that was all about to change.

         As soon as we arrived, the music got us all dancing. And when kids dance it's like the holiest experience ever... it's like Jesus came back... at least until the song ends. Then we looked around and realized how stupid we looked, flailing around like monkeys. But it didn't matter, because the next song was starting.

         Soon enough it was run-around-the-house until we get tired time. Trouble was, we never seemed to get tired. This period of the night ended when my frequent circuits around the establishment began to make one of the adults dizzy, somehow. Even though for at least 3/4ths of the time I wasn't even in view. Go figure. Then it was wrestling time, which inevitably ends when the smallest kid ends up under a pile of bodies and has to sit on the couch watching reruns of... oh.. what was on back then... Full House? which he can't even enjoy because the adults are drowning it out with talk of remodeling the house, intermixed with cackles of glee.

         Next was the haunted house! There was a maze of some kind, and frightening visages. Trouble was, I recognized most of them and said infinitely-clever things like, "Hi, Mike's dad!" which made everybody hate me. I took it in stride though: if they couldn't understand the truth, give them a few years. But I soon forgot all that as the next phase of the haunted house began: the vat of brains and eyeballs. We were encouraged by a ghastly voice to verify the contents of the vat, and sure enough, it was brains and eyeballs!

         The pinata was slightly bigger than the smallest of us. We knew it would take a good whack to break this candy behemoth. We all tried, and we were all summarily found wanting. As we drooped our heads in shame, one of the adults stepped up to the plate. ****CRAAAACKKK... WHOOOSHHHHH*** as the candy sprayed in all directions. Now the mad scramble. It was a war zone, but the spoils of war were bountiful indeed. We hadn't noticed it before, me and my group, but we were slightly larger than the other kids. We made a haul that night. Pushing, shoving, and tripping the smaller kids was the order of the day. A small voice in our minds said in a pipsqueak voice: "You shouldn't be doing this." But the mountain's voice shouts us all down. And in this case, it was a mountain of candy.

         We retreated with the day's wages into the den of the house. We closed the door and began counting our loot: the profits were staggering. We could practically open our own candy shop. Then the trading began. It was like a commodity pit: you couldn't hear the guy next to you unless you yelled. When the dust cleared, it looked like the final moments at a poker table: one of the kids mysteriously had most of the candy, and the better candy at that. He was sweating. We knew who we were gonna be begging money from in about twenty years.

         A knock sounded at the door. We quickly elected a spokesman, who opened the door a crack and acted tough. It was a gang of the smaller kids. They had their mothers with them.

         We were each ordered to give half of our bags of candy to a communal pot, which was then split equally among all youngsters. I think that was my first memory of unfairness.

         After that we raided the fridge. We were working smoothly as a team at this point. A scout would run up ahead, and whisper back "Adults in the vicinity," or "All clear!" and our spokesman would bark out quiet but intense orders like "Fall back!" or "Move! Move! Move!" until we reached our objective. It was almost anticlimactic to find only fruit beverages. They were passed down the line, chain gang style. We quaffed them vigorously. And the night changed after that.

         Within the next half hour we found ourselves in a different house. Apparently we had been driven home by our parents. We were in the basement, playing God knows what childish game, but it seemed like the best game ever invented. Then a girl leaned forward and tried to kiss me. I didn't know it at the time, I was told this later. I was also told that it wasn't just any fruit drink.

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