I love being the daddy of young kids on Halloween, because it lets me dress up in costumes again. I mean, more than I usually do. Since Tonya is in too much constant pain to walk (literally; she can't make it to the end of the driveway anymore), it falls on me to take the boys around the neighborhood while she gives out candy. River decided to be some odd thing from the Star Wars cartoon on TV: a bounty hunter with a face like a blue termite and a giant western hat and pipes leading into its throat. Cedar decided to be Ron Weasley from Harry Potter, with his hair sprayed bight orange and freckles added with a makeup pen. I was a Death Eater, with rubber mask and hooded cape.

Cedar had apparently forgotten how Halloween worked, and was stunned by the result of going to a door and knocking. "Daddy," he exclaimed, "they put CANDY in my bag! I got CANDY!" And he marveled anew at each house.

Of course, he has no sense of tact when it comes to Halloween either. Cedar would peer into the bowls of each neighbor's candy, and occasionally say, "Nope, no thanks. I don't like what you guys got," and scamper away, leaving behind baffled-looking adults.

One neighbor is a Chinese immigrant, apparently fairly recent, because had not yet figured out exactly what Halloween entailed. He knew that the other houses had put up strange lights, but was not sure what his role was. His lights were on and he answered the door to the parade of costumed children, and had to confess to each of them that he had not bought candy for the evening. Well, Cedar shouted at the guy, "DON'T FORGET TO BUY CANDY ON HALLOWEEN!!!" The poor guy probably had no idea why he was being scolded so loudly by a six-year-old.

After we completed our walk around the block, accumulating approximate four hundred and twenty-six pounds of candy, we got in my car and dropped the top for a "Halloween tour" of the rest of the neighborhood. Playing "The Nightmare Before Christmas" on the ipod, we drove to see the houses with the coolest lights and decorations. One house is known in our area for "the chainsaw guy," a masked man who hides and charges at passing cars with a chainsaw. Last year, our kids were scared to death by him, but this year they pleaded "please take us back to see the chainsaw man!"