Maybe it was simply the felt aggression of the ritual working itself out. People in masks, entering strangers’ property by night, demanding things – even in cozy and wholesome contexts, it’s an image that never quite loses its bite, never quite quells the faint flutterings of other possibilities. Young people prowling the streets after dark – sometimes I am, at least for an instant, a little wary of coming across a group of them walking alone at night, often with a thread of tenderness wrapped around the coiled spring of self-preservatory instinct. I remember you, you think. You are so strong and so lovable and so stupid. You have no idea how easily you could wreck your life and my life and both of our mothers’ lives.

Halloween is some of the most fun I remember having as a child.