“Life is more fun if you play games.”
— Roald Dahl, My Uncle Oswald
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Keep Living Like It's Halloween
Thirty-five years ago, a blizzard rolled over the Upper Midwest and the porch lights stayed on.
The costume went over the winter coat, and on October 31, 1991, nobody was arguing about it.
I was 13, which in trick-or-treating years is getting close to retirement age. One more October and somebody’s grandma would look me up and down and ask if I wasn’t getting a little old for this. The seemingly endless window of free candy was closing in on me, and I had no intention of letting a little weather close it early.
Nobody saw just how big this one was going to get. Two days earlier, I’d been in the crowd celebrating the Minnesota Twins World Series championship. Jack Morris had thrown ten shutout innings in Game 7, Gene Larkin had blooped one over a drawn-in outfield, and the whole state was still abuzz. The forecast for Halloween called for a few inches at most, maybe rain in central Minnesota. By the time my brothers and I hit the sidewalk, the snow was falling fast enough to fill in our footprints. We didn’t know it was the start of a now-famous Halloween Blizzard. By the time it finished, we would have 20 inches of snow and a story for a lifetime.
But we weren’t thinking about history. We were thinking about Snickers.
Halloween ran on a schedule in our family, and while usually running late, the schedule started with the tour. Before we knocked on a single stranger’s door, my brothers and I suited up as pirates, superheroes, or whichever sports star was our idol that year, and made the rounds to the grandparents and aunts and uncles. Every stop went the same way. The door swung open, somebody gasped, somebody guessed wrong on purpose about who was under the mask, and we walked out with a treat and a little more excitement than we walked in with.
Then we were released into the wild.
Plastic pumpkins were for rookies. We carried pillowcases. We knew all the details: which neighborhoods were “musts,” the houses that gave full-size bars, which gave popcorn balls, and which had the dog to avoid. We also knew the rules, because they’d been drilled into us before we left the house. Say “trick or treat.” Say “thank you.” Take one unless they tell you to take two. Some years the pillowcase came home so full it became a chore to carry.
1991 was a dragging year, except this time the pillowcase was soaked through. A storm was rolling in that would shut down the state; still, people kept opening their doors to wet kids in capes mumbling “thank you” through frozen masks. Forty-eight hours earlier, the whole state had poured into the streets to celebrate together. Now the snow was coming, and the neighbors were still showing up.
The strange thing about Halloween is how much of it runs against the norms of the rest of the year. We spend twelve months telling our kids not to take candy from strangers, then hand them a pillowcase and send them out after dark, in masks, to do exactly that. Adults who let their own mom’s calls go to voicemail open the door dozens of times for the likes of a hot dog and Ninja Turtles. Neighbors stand at the end of the driveway comparing notes. People put skeletons on the lawn and spiders on the porch. We make our homes look frightening, then spend the evening making the people who approach them feel welcome.
Even the dental plan takes a night off. The next day, more than 900 Minnesota schools and businesses closed, ours included. My brothers and I spent the snow day sorting the haul and running our annual trade negotiations. Almond Joys had no trade value. If you weren’t careful, you learned a tough lesson about moderation that parents struggle to teach, delivered directly by my stomach.
The pillowcases emptied. The costumes went back in the closet. Eventually even the snow from 1991 melted, though it took its sweet time.
Somewhere along the way, we put away more than costumes. I aged out of trick-or-treating soon after, which was fair. Six-foot pirates shouldn’t be showing up on anybody’s porch. But it’s easy to age out of the rest of it, too. We stop dropping by unannounced, stop dressing up, and the door stays closed unless somebody calls ahead. Nobody decides any of this. It just happens.
Every one of us has our own front porch. For a coach, it might be the freshman hovering outside the office, deciding whether to knock. For a parent, it’s the kid who needs a place to land after a hard day. For a neighbor, it might be someone who hasn’t had a visitor in weeks. Somebody is always walking up to our porch, looking for the light to be on.
For one night a year, we’re terrific at this. We already know how.
Today the decorations come down. We pack up the skeletons and the fake cobwebs. Maybe we should leave the porch light on.
“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”
— Mother Teresa
Connecting this quote to the story. Every encounter is an opportunity to make someone’s day a little brighter—and we don’t need Halloween to open our doors and do it.
This week’s Chasing Influence tip: You don't need a special occasion to make somebody feel special.