All Hallow's Rottie
This year, Halloween falls on a Sunday. As I dragged boxes of orange and black decorations out of the closet, and hung the jack-o-lantern flag over the porch, I couldn't help but think back several years to the last time Halloween fell on a Sunday.
That year actually worked out quite well for trick-or-treaters in my area. There was a general push to allow trick-or-treaters to venture out the evening before Halloween, if their parents wanted to go that route. That way, parents could take their kids around without interfering with evening church services. Also, the kids didn't have to worry so much about getting up for school the next day. They could stay up late and stuff their little faces to their hearts content.
Of course, it didn't take much of a genius to realize that this plan basically measured out to a Double Halloween. Kids could go hit one neighborhood on Saturday night and then another on Sunday. Who knows, they could have probably hit the same neighborhood twice if they just changed their costume.
It so happened that the Saturday before Halloween found my cousin, Matthew, spending the evening at my place. He was probably around 10 or so at the time. His father was going to take him trick-or-treating on Sunday, but for Saturday he was mine to entertain.
But how to entertain him? Plus, I'm a kid at heart, so I was a little jealous that I wasn't going to get to take him trick-or-treating ... or was I?
"Hey, Matt? Want to go trick-or-treating around my neighborhood tonight? You'd go tomorrow night, too, so you'd get double candy?"
"But I don't have my costume."
"We'll find something!"
So, over the next 30 minutes or so, we ransacked the house. A black, button up skirt made a good cape when fastened around the neck and I had a plastic set of vampire fangs around (don't ask). Add a couple of dabs of eyeliner to the neck for bite marks and a couple of streaks of red lipstick down the chin to the mix. Suddenly, Matt The Undead Preteen was born.
But did my Halloween mania end there? Of course not.
We had decided to "hit" a nice, safe subdivision about half a mile from my house. And while it is usually a good idea to leave pets well out of the Halloween fun, we decided to take my, then Rottie, Chelsea, along as "bodyguard" for the walk over. By this point in her life, Chelsea had settled down into a classy middle-aged lady. She was excelling in her job as therapy dog, and had a nice, calm, although sometimes hammy, temperament.
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