When trouble comes looking

When I was a kid, Halloween came and went almost as fast as the belly-ache did.

Unless your folks were rich, you made a costume of what you could pilfer from other family members’ closets. You went around the neighborhood and filled your paper grocery bag with SweetTarts and candy corn, maybe a popcorn ball if you were lucky (they hadn’t invented terrorism).

Halloween seems to be about two month long now. You trick or treat downtown Saturday, at church alternative Halloween on Sunday, the in-school party Monday

(“Mom, did I tell you that I signed you up to make three dozen orange cupcakes and I need them in a half hour?”).

You hit the senior center one day, the college the next, the hospital the day after that, and if you still have any hankering for sugar highs, you take to the streets on Halloween night. You need an appointment book to schedule Halloween for your kids.

Kiddos must end up with more candy than Nestles has crunch. Is this holiday sponsored by the Storm Lake Dentists Retirement Foundation? Is a kid supposed to eat 20 pounds of candy Halloween night and puke ‘til they hit puberty? Luckily, no. While you’re sleeping, your parents steal your Snickers and Reese’s and leave you the teeth-breaking Tootsie Rolls. Some things never change.

I notice that Halloween costumes have become a rather competitive thing these days, putting Lady Gaga’s costuming department to shame. No pillowcase ghosts.

I learned one lesson from Halloweens of misspent youth.

There was one house on the outskirts of my neighborhood where they simply put out a sign on trick or treat night that said, “Help yourself.”

Oho! “Help yourself!!” How those two simple words set off fireworks inside a candy-crazed kid’s fevered cranium.

There was a big hole in the screen door at the old house, and within reach inside was a rickety table laden with tempting candy - talking full-size Baby Ruth here - no one around to guard the treasure trove.

Except, unseen in the shadows, one gigantic hulking black dog of vastly uncertain breeding.

Reach once, fine. But try to grab for a second handful, and you would hear a deep, rumbling growl begin, as if from the very hounds of hell. A pair of red eyes would snap open, and the beast would stir to its feet and begin to purposefully stride toward the offending youth, nails clicking ominously against the wood porch, fangs flashing in the moonlight. You’d see kids sprinting for home at mach 1, their candy spilling through the air.

That’s the first image that pops into my mind to this day when I’m tempted to get carried away and reach for more than I need and have coming in life. Help yourself to a six-bedroom house, fancy clothes, luxuries you don’t really need, an undeserved tax deduction? In my mind, I hear thick claws begin to click against pine planks...

It’s true for a lot of things in life. There are consequences for all you take, and they just might bite.

I got to know that dog in later years. Big as a house but gentle as a kitten. I think it enjoyed playing the enforcer for Halloween, which it did for a good many years, scaring the dickens out of many a trick-or-treater. Even a dog, it

seems, can pretend to be something else one night a year. I believe that dog, by the way, was named Trouble. I smile at that. You don’t have to go looking for trouble.

When “your eyes get bigger than your stomach,” as my grandmother used to say of greed, trouble will come looking for you.