The Wages of Sin: How My Diabolical Halloween Trick Went Wrong

As mentioned in my previous post, I recently wrote up a Halloween memory from my wayward youth. Here it is, hope you enjoy it.

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Halloween? Count me in.

Nowadays it’s because I’m out in the country and almost never get any trick-or-treaters, so I get to eat all the candy myself.

But back the day, when I was a kid, I had to work for my candy. And I was more than happy to make the rounds.

My brother Andy and I always dressed as hobos. Laziest costume ever. A few ratty clothes and some black smudges on the face.

It was always cold, so we wore sweaters and parkas underneath. We were portly hobos.

Greedy? I’ll say we were greedy. We’d go out, fill up a bag with loot, come home, dump the candy on our bed and head back out for more.

We were still at it when I was a sophomore in high school and Andy was in seventh grade.

But that year was different. I was armed. With about six cans of shaving cream.

Did I steal my dad’s stuff? No. I was working after school as a stock boy at a drug store where I had access to all sorts of exotic supplies.

007 Cologne, for example.

James Bond was just hitting his stride as a merchandizing phenom. My classmates never knew what I might smell like when I came to school.

But you can’t soap windows with cologne, and soap itself seemed like pretty tame stuff when it came to committing Halloween mayhem.

Ah, but shaving cream! It really spurted out of some of those old cans. Like a flamethrower and fire extinguisher combined.

So off we went, ready to commit mayhem.

But there were problems. We lusted after candy, so we spent most of our time going door to door, collecting loot.

The big problem: I was a good kid. A kid who behaved. I didn’t have a lot of experience being naughty. (I’ve made up for it since, of course.)

I thought about spraying some trees as we went along, but it seemed so wrong. My artistic soul rejected the idea. It was cheap, meaningless, unworthy.

We’d gone home, dumped our loot, and were out looking for more. Time was running out.

We were on a quiet cross street, looking for porch lights that were still on, when Fate intervened. I realized we were standing in front of our junior pharmacist’s house. There was something perversely poetic about the thought of spraying his house with the drug store’s shaving cream.

But there were lights on in the house and I was too chicken to make a frontal assault. My brother and I snuck down the driveway and saw a beautiful sight out back: the garage.

It was turned sideways and painted dark green. Like a giant sketch pad for anyone who was going to do their sketching with shaving cream.

But what to draw, what to write?? My mind went blank, and my artistic soul was taking a nap. Fret, fret, fret. Suddenly, inspiration! — I’d write “Hell’s Angels” in big, BIG letters.