Tax Evasion

 About six years after I was forced to dress as a green alien with a basketball head, I got to choose my costume for Halloween. My choice? Dracula—or more accurately, generic vampire. My costume consisted of a black cape with a red lining, a plaid shirt (because maybe I wanted to be a lumberjack too?) and jeans, oily white face paint, and hard plastic vampire fangs that fit like loose dentures.

We always went trick-or-treating at the Blue Ridge Mall in Hendersonville. I’m sure going from door-to-door in the government housing where we lived presented its own challenges. A lot of kids followed our example, and there was a long line through the mall of Bart Simpsons, Batmen, Terminators, princesses, and other scary monsters holding their plastic pumpkin pails, shiny bags, and even pillow cases collecting candy from the stores.

Then came what I had looked forward to the whole night. A quick drive to World of Clothing! I know—what’s exciting for an 11-year-old at a clothing store? Well, this was no ordinary clothing store. On Halloween it became a Holy Grail. And how did it gain this elevated status??

Through the years, most of my candy consisted of fun size, snack size, and smaller round candies. Made sense to me—economy over presentation. After all, the only investment I had in the whole process was the minimal physical effort of raising my bag and muttering, “Trick-or-Treat!” and then waiting for my prize to hit the bottom of the bag.

The line was wrapped around the parking lot when we finally arrived at the rumored El Dorado. I had never seen such a sight! We took our places at the back and slowly shuffled forward as the line moved. After what seemed like an hour, we were inside the store, snaking around and through the endless clothing racks. We were finally at the front.

“Trick-or-Treat!” I exclaimed through my ill-fitting teeth. Clunk. Huh. That was a little heavier, and I wasn’t sure what kind of candy had a green wrapper. I gingerly reached into my bag to pull out the treat as I tried to keep up while walking back to the car. Aha! There it is! Wait! A full-size Snickers bar and a one-dollar bill?!

The ride home was a little sweeter knowing that I had secured a Halloween unicorn. When we got home, I immediately removed the Snickers and the one-dollar bill from my bag and hid them in my underwear drawer. No way these most fortunate items were going to be parental taxed.