Halloween. How great is that? At the risk of sounding party pooper paranoid, this is the night that I let total strangers—many of them full grown teens disgorged from non-local mini-vans—sashay up to my doorstep wearing disguises. Where I use both hands to fork over a type of food that I normally parcel out to my daughter like Morphine to a heroin addict. Where I provide every Tom, Dick and Dracula with an inside view of my house. The occasion where masked people feel free to jump out at me in a faux attack when I’m walking down the street, at night, with my nine-year-old. Packing heat (me not her). The same night when, last year, I scared a teen so badly with my clown mask and maniacal laugh that she ran down the middle of the street for four blocks (straight through a stop sign), then brought her friends back to hurl curses and beer bottles at my house. Now get off my lawn!