Halloween is fast approaching, and it's a great time to get excited. I mean why wouldn't you be excited. Pumpkin carving, free candy, tons of parties to attend, and having the chance to scare your friends with their greatest fears. It's an absolutely fun holiday, but there is one thing that many forget about this day, and that's all the mischief. TP-ing, ding dong ditching, really anything that could be considered misbehavior. Most people usually did these devilish things on the eve of Halloween, but my friends and I usually did it on the day of, we would always go during the after hours and try to stir as much mischief as we could. It was surprisingly a lot of fun and just the fear of being caught gave us a rush of adrenaline. Well, it was until our eighth grade year, when we realized that it could be very dangerous.
One of our favorite acts that we always did on Halloween was ding dong ditching. We just found it so fun to sneak up to a random person's front door, swiftly push on the doorbell, turn around and run for our lives, and finally hid behind something to see whoever answers the door reaction. We thought it was beyond hilarious. On that night, after we successful ding dong ditched multiple houses, we decided to leave the best for last, my neighbor. Yes, I know that sounds super lame and kind of mean to do that to a neighbor, but in reality it wasn't. My neighbor was one year older than all of us, but he was a complete jerk not only to us, but everyone in general. So we thought that it was only right to save the jerk for last. We knew that his reaction was going to be priceless.
Since my friend Jacob and I got the last house, it was our other two friends, Aaron and Dean, turn to get this house. Jacob and I hid behind a car that was parked in front of the local park that I lived by. We slightly crouched down to see Aaron and Dean ding dong ditch this jerk's house. We watched them sneak up all the way up to the door like ninjas. Dean slowly raised his right hand, shaking with adrenaline. His finger finally pressed the doorbell, and we heard the high pitched ring all the way from the car. Dean and Aaron quickly turned around and started to sprint towards us to hide behind the car with us. That is when it all went downhill. Half way through their sprint towards us, my neighbor rapidly opened the door, but it wasn't him that opened the door, it was his father. Dean and Aaron heads snap behind to see that it was his dad that opened the door. Now, that might not sound so bad, and your're probably wondering what could his dad possibly do. Well, in his hands, he had a shiny, long, and intimidating shotgun in his hand. We still to this day remember that heart dropping noise that shotgun made when he pumped it back and forth. Dean and Aaron snapped their heads back towards us and started to sprint like they were Olympians. Jacob and I jumped with fear and started to run into the darkness behind. Dean and Aaron quickly caught up to us and we ran what felt like entirety away from that psychopath and towards Dean's house.
If your're wondering, yes I did successful make it back to my house on that evening. Luckily, he wasn't out there when I made my way back to my house. My neighbor eventually moved away, and they never found out that my friends and I were the ones that ding dong ditched his house. I'm grateful that nothing horrible happened on that day, because it would have been very hard to explain to my parents why there is a hole in my leg. Overall, Halloween is such a fun holiday, but I will never forget that life lesson I learned that evening. I learned that causing trouble is all fun and games until your life might be put into danger. It's just not worth to put your life in danger for a little childish game because you never know how people are going to react. That is why I will never ding dong ditch ever again.
Happy Halloween.
