My Wonderful Halloween Adventure

This is hardly what I expected my first post to be, but here goes.

My doorbell doesn't work and I wanted to take a nap, so I took a neighbor's suggestion to set a bowl of candy on the porch. I put a sign over it inviting people to "TAKE ONE". Shortly after five I heard excited voices and then the sound of the steel bowl hitting the porch floor. Glancing out I caught a glimpse of some boys running away. I went out (without a jacket in just under 60° F weather, although I have a cold coming on) and headed after them.

There were four boys, maybe 14 years old. They saw me following them at a pretty good pace for an old guy. After about 1/10 of a mile, two began to run while the other two kept a fairly constant distance ahead of me. I started noticing some of the candy on the sidewalk, and I picked it up as I went along. Eventually the nearer boys speeded up, and they all gathered at the seawall at the beginning of a 1/2 mile long causeway leading to a peninsula. So they could only avoid me by crossing the causeway.

As I got close, waved, and called to them to stay, they ran about 1/3 of the way across the causeway and sat on the wall. Altogether we had gone over 1/2 mile. They stayed there long enough for me to get within earshot. One waved to me, I waved back, and the others followed suit. I called that I wanted to ask a question. (I'm glad I had had more than 15 minutes to figure out what to do if they ever let me catch up to them.)

So I said, "Suppose someone sets a bowl of candy on his porch with a sign telling people to take one piece, because he can't be available all evening; and suppose some kids come along and take a lot and knock the bowl off its table, so there may not be enough for everybody else who comes by — do you think that's a good thing to do?" While I was asking, two of them put bandanas over their faces, but they all answered, "No." One said he only took one piece, and I said I was happy to hear it. Then they asked if there was anything they could do about it. I said I had picked up some of the candy I found on the sidewalk, and there was really nothing practical for them to do now, but I was glad they agreed with me that people should not do that sort of thing. At the end, they were calling me "Sir."

They wished me a Happy Halloween and I returned the wish, waved to them, and returned home — finding and gathering a fair amount of additional candy on the way back.

Maybe there was something better I could have said to them, but clearly they knew they had done something wrong, so I thought a simple acknowledgment was plenty. I saw no need to belabor it, and I was pleasantly surprised by the offer to make it up somehow. In effect, I wanted to show them a bit of mercy. They may think I'm a crazy old coot, but I prefer to hope that I both made them uncomfortable enough about what they had done that they are less likely to do something like it again and treated them respectfully enough that they can accept the lesson. So I came home feeling pretty self-satisfied and bursting to share the story with the world. And an added bonus: while I was out on this adventure, my cold symptoms didn't seem to bother me.