By José Dominiguez, November 07, 2019 — Halloween is out of my repertoire. Nevertheless, I usher myself in understanding and experiencing the joy of an extra holiday in my long list of holidays.
The first thing I learned is that is proper to say Happy Halloween day! It’s related to something, I heard, about the crop day, something about witches flying but nothing serious and precise. The only precise thing was that my granddaughter Sofia was dressed as Sleeping Beauty and her face radiated joy as if [she] was a real princess. Poncho, my son, was in a big hurry taking her out of the house to be in a candy path gathering with a huge orange plastic pumpkin in his arm. Before leaving he approached me asking, “Are you going to be around?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because we have a pumpkin full of candies but if the people that go by the street do not see the candies they will not knock on the door.”
“In that case, I replied, “I prepare to be outside and to give away personally the candies!”
“OK,” he said and to accommodate myself in the front stairs holding the pumpkin on my legs. Our street is not so domesticated so I had to be patient, productive, and cheerful, I guess. In Mexico, I used to be a street salesperson so I did not feel shy or limited. My first customer was my neighbor across the street, Paul, a very conservative and affluent person of a few words and limited gestures. He was going to give me two small chocolate candy bars and conspicuously said: “These are for Sofia if you please,” (I thought to myself, “Thanks that he mentioned Sofia, otherwise I had devoured those candies”).
Well, I took very seriously my task and decided to trace each pedestrian trying to do eye contact, later wave my hand saying “Happy Halloween,” and if the response was positive, I will stand up and walk towards the group offering with a big smile my pumpkin. Once their hand was on the stuff, I will say, “You can take as much as you want.” Well, two French families crossed by the empty street and each one took a single candy in a very polite and joyful matter, I thought well, at this pace I will need 500 families to end my candy load. Some families turned to me saying, “No thanks, we do not eat sweets because they cause dental cavities.” My pumpkin was full and some kind of anxiety was building in me.
But some family groups of other neighbors arrived with wild outfits as Batman, robots, spiders, and generously took half of my load. At the end, I finished with half of my pumpkin empty and with the satisfaction that I offered to each of the trick-or-treaters a chance to enjoy not only my candies but my wishes of a very Happy Halloween.