Social chaos stirs from
disagreement, and typically disagreement stems from a discrepancy in two
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October 31st
2001, Julian and I went trick-or-treating, by
ourselves, in his upper-class urban neighborhood. Sound harmless? Well,
that night it wasn’t.
Julian and I were
making our rounds as we approached another unassuming house. I remember thinking
it was nice, which meant they probably had premium candy bars sitting on the
front porch unsupervised. Wealthy families did that kind of stuff.
Wrong, instead we were
greeted by an empty porch and a pack of teenage boys that came running out of
the woods yelling and screaming toward us. I knew it was Halloween, but I was still
scared. There were many of them, but there were only two of us.
They encircled us—that cliché
bully scene—and a masked “Jason” told us there wasn’t any candy because his
parents were gone. After sharing that delightful news, he came closer and stuck
his hand inside my pillow case. He stole a Reese’s. I love Reese’s. I’m sure I had at least twenty more in my pillow case—because
“no parents” really meant “no candy limit”—but that didn’t matter.
I was furious.
They turned to go
inside, we turned to leave. But, on the way out, I did something stupid. In
hindsight, it was foolish, but in that moment, smashing their two intricately
carved festive pumpkins on their driveway couldn’t have been more gratifying. I
made an illogical emotional choice, an enraged reaction in response to his
illogical display of proprietary rights to my
candy.
Parents, supervise your
children.
I could see that experiences like this would bring about immense frustration. When we feel like we loose control over something that we think is ours it's one of the worst feelings we can have. It's then that we really want some authority backing us up.
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