Trick

The Halloween evening continued.

The next ring on my doorbell was my friend George. George is wrestling with the breakup of his remarriage to his first wife. She is currently living back in her native state (location not mental), and George is one of those people who needs to be around other people.

He has permission to come by whenever he wants.

I was glad he picked tonight to come by!

He joined me in the computer office where we talked while continued to journal and check email and whatnot while waiting for more trick-or-treaters. About half an hour later, my doorbell rang again.

It was my niece and nephews!

And their folks!

And MY folks!

They had all been at my church Trunk-or-Treat, and came to treat me afterwards!

The youngans didn’t know what to think of the ugly man who answered the door and greeted their inquisitive remarks with grunts. The youngest, Ryan, took one look at me and tried to dart off the porch. His mom’s knees held him and she tried to reassure him that it was me.

I finally lifted off the mask, and they were visibly relieved, and excited that they had guessed correctly: it WAS Uncle Parra under the mask!!

They came inside and just went spastic. So did the youngans.

Seriously, the kids went nuts — asking for water, running from room to room…they were excited to see their Uncle. The grownups pressed into my living room, joined by George who asked just whom the kids belonged to. (He already knows my folks, as we all go to the same church, but he had never met my step-brother or his wife — or their kids — before now).

It was amid this uproar, in a brief silence during an attempt to quiet the children — in this pause so that it was incidentally heard crystal clearly by all — that my dad commented, “Ya know your fly is down?”

…

It had been down since the beginning of the evening, when I was debating on what to wear. I had undone my belt and my fly, thinking that I would change out of my slacks, then deciding against. It was then that I rebuttoned them, and re-belted.

But not re-zipped.

Somehow, this explains why I only had two doorbells of trick-or-treaters all night.