Monday 31 October 2011

A good deed on Halloween night

It is Halloween now at last! Or maybe it comes too soon, I don't know. I thought to start celebrating, I would tell of a good deed I just made and in the meantime publish a great unknown line. I was walking home from work, I usually walk through a poor/working class neighbourhood on my way to the train station. There were a few children trick-or-treating. I love this tradition, which has a bad reputation in England, unfortunately. Just before I arrived at the station, I saw a young boy with his older teenage brother. The little boy barely had a costume: some bandana that was supposed to make him look like a pirate I guess. They had just been not answered at a door and the child's bag looked desperately empty. I had a piece of chocolate which I got from work (they were celebrating too there) which I thought to eat at home. I called them like this:

"Hey kid! I got a chocolate here from work, and I ain't gonna eat it, so you can have it."

Not the greatest unknown line, I know, but with the pseudo-American slang (it wouldn't fool an American, but it does fool Brits sometimes), spoken by a stranger clad in dark clothes, I thought it had an effect. Sometimes it is not so much what one says as how one says it. I was aiming for sounding both generous and detached. The child was intimidated, but thanked me, and the big brother said "Cheers!" So it was my good deed of the night. I brought a bit of the spirit of the season and this proud tradition that is trick-or-treating here.

1 comment:

Gwen Buchanan said...

now that was a sweet thing to do on a dastardly night..