Halloween Fraud

Another child is wailing at our front door. I think it's a girl. She's dressed up in a very cute ballet outfit. It's very cold outside. But that's not why she's crying, nor why the sidewalk leading from out house to the street will be known forever, after tonight, as the walk of tears.

The Deke had a bright idea. She handed out the CD you see pictured rather than candy. If I'd only known.

It's a good CD. A very good CD. The Deke teaches children music. She did long-term work with the Rural Art Center in a town outside Eugene, Lorane. The children kept singing better and better and so the Deke gave them the experience of working in a recording studio and they recorded "How Can I Keep from Singing".

And, I'm sure, tonight, children up and down the streets of Eugene are saying to their parents, "Don't make me eat my Snickers, Butterfingers, Milky Way, Reece's Peanut Butter Cup, Skittles, and all the treats they got from normal Trick or Treat destinations; no, I'm sure they are saying, "Mom, put on the CD we got on Madison Street. I so love music more than candy."

You might be saying to yourself, "Raymond. You should be proud of the Deke. She is a true progressive, going against the grain of an outmoded candy-driven, greed-feeding, sugar-frenzied tradition and giving children life's true treat, music.

Spare me.

She couldn't sell the damn things. She can't find people to take them willingly. She gives them as Christmas gifts and family members send them back with a note: "Thank you, Deke, but we got one last year." Two weeks ago she passed them out to all her fellow future elementary school teachers in her graduate school class "Classroom Communities." So far nobody has found the time to listen.

If How Can I Keep from Singing CD's were fiberglass, we'd be insulated against an Antarctic winter.

So the Deke perpeptuates a fraud: she gives them away at Halloween and tells the children, when they stop to breathe between sobs: "Listen to every song on the CD. It will change your life." They'd rather have a tooth pulled.

Many of the children in our neighborhood did not consider the Deke to have treated them. I hear them outside. I think we are going to be tricked. Splat! Crap. Egg number 1. Splat, Splat, SplatSplatSplat Splat SplatSplat. It's freezing out. I'll have to chisel the yolks off the house.

I fully expect these kids will next donate a year's worth of toilet paper to the trees out front.

Maybe it's worth it. Sure, kids cried, the house is a mess, the yard will be next. We'd call the cops, but they'll laugh, "You put what in their bags? What'd you expect them to do to your house?" But, maybe it's worth it.

I mean, the Deke teaches kids good songs. No Barney stuff. Nothing cute. Look at the songs the kids sang on this CD. They are worth SPLAT having your house egged for.