eleos

When I was a kid me and my brother would go trick or treating on halloween but would come home pretty much empty handed every year. The people where we live just weren't into it. Most wouldn't answer their doors when knocked upon. Choosing avoidance as the best option available to them. Others would open their door and stand there with confused looks on their faces when confronted with two kids dressed as ghosts cheerily chiming "trick-or-treat?". So it was with a great reluctance that I said yes to my daughter's ask of "Can I go trick or treating dad?". Thinking to myself that if refuse (and how could I?) I would be depriving my little G of part of her childhood, yet if I agree then I risk her coming home empty-handed, heart broken and perhaps a little more cynical of life.

Anyway, this was what was going through my mind this time last year. Of course I let her go. My brother had bought himself an amazing costume and wanted to take his niece trick or treating and I wasn't ever going to deprive either of them of that. I still had my doubts about our neighbours but I swallowed them and watched my daughter skip off with her uncle down the driveway. So, time passes, about an hour or so before I hear the front door open and come down stairs to see a llittle girl with a big smile and an even bigger bag of goodies. They hadn't even gone very far - only around the block and yet she had amassed a greater bounty than her uncle and I together ever had over the course of our entire childhood. I stood there a happy, proud father.

And so today, a year on, lil G and her uncle once more venture out around the neighbourhood on what has now become their "annual neice/uncle halloween outing" together. I have to admit though, I was still a little bit nevous for her. Trick or treating on a Monday night is never going to be easy I thought. Thankfully though I was wrong again. She again came home an hour or so later with a bulging bag of treats. All smiles and full of tales of cats following her around the block and pensioners giving her bags of coins.

I guess seeing how much fun my daughter has on halloween now is making up for how much it used to suck for me when I was her age. So next year I will be dressing up. I'm going to get myself a cool-as-fuck costume and carve as many pumpkins as I can in one night.


Uncle Jonth & Lil G


The Bounty!