My Big Halloween Caper

Living out in the country makes for a lousy Halloween. We never see trick or treaters, and back in the day we lived in a subdivision, my favorite thing to do was get the house all scary and make the neighborhood kids cry. I was good at it. So anyway, now that we are doing the Green Acres thing, (some of you go ask your parents about that show, we’ll wait…………..) I don’t get the chance much anymore. Alright, life moves on, so we have this tradition, oh, about 4 years now, where we get together with our best friends, Andy and the Missus, and we schlep the kids over to a local subdivision and let them collect candy and hang out. A quick word about our friends: We really love these people. Our daughters share a birthday, and became good friends at school. I met The Missus in line to pick up kids one day when she engaged me about my Wes Clark sign on my truck. We frequently spend weekends together, cooking enormous amounts of food, watching the kids play, and witnessing to each other about The Glory Of Jesus.

As much as I like them, they are not nice people. When they came over last night, they brought with them some kind of fermented potion and bade me to partake of it. Not wanting to insult these long time friends, I sipped a wee bit of it, nodded vigorously when they asked me if I liked it, and then spit the spirit laden concoction into a nearby trash can. No matter, I must have absorbed some thru my gums or something. Prior to their arrival, I was sober as the proverbial churchmouse. Potent stuff, this takeela, or whatever its called.

Ok, so off we go to the neighborhood, the 7 of them wedged into The MissusMobile, and me leading the way on my trusty four -wheeler. Same thing, every year. The four-wheeler was used in previous years to ferry worn out kids back the car, and also to make sure I did not have to walk the whole way like they had to. Well, thanks to that fiery liquid from Mexico, I decided it would be fun to roar up to groups of unsupervised trick-n-treaters and “tax” them some of their candy. (See, I never get any from the kids, the selfish brats) So off I go, careening around, scaring kids and extorting tootsie rolls and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from them. What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, some future College Republican went whining to the local cops about my reign of terror, and I swear, they sent everything but the SWAT team out looking for me. Squad cars. Flashlights. Infrared equipped Helicopters. Search and destroy dogs. Well, normally, I wouldn’t have cared much. I would have assured the officer that I was playing a game, you know, “mixing it up”, having some fun, and I’m sure he would have seen the humor and let me go on my way.

However

If you’ll remember, my neer’do’well “friends” forced me to drink, and, being a tad inexperienced with mind altering substances, I was, in fact, shit-faced. Of course, that made driving the four-wheeler that much more fun, and that much more illegal. (At least Andy was duly appreciative of the perfect figure 8 patterns my tires made on some of the lawns) So, when I first caught sight of roadblock set up to snag me, I parked on a lawn and went strolling along with the group. (I made my son go turn the key off, I figured if they caught him, I’d bail him out before he got a tattoo or joined a gang or something) I swear they actually staked out that house for over 30 minutes. They cruised back and forth, they interviewed the people that lived there, I think they even swabbed the handlebars for DNA.

Eventually, I figured I could appear at least somewhat sober, and confessed to one of the coppers that it was mine, and that I was merely keeping an eye on my kids, which he should understand is part of my job as President of the Neighborhood Watch Association. Fortunately, I picked the right guy. He was cool about it, explained about the complaint call, and asked me rather firmly to “take it home.” I shot him a snappy salute, turned on my heel, and tripped over some bricks bordering a flower bed.

My bail is $500.00

Anyone?