The Thing On Our Doorstep

(Guys, I had some uploading issues with this post. It was meant to go up last week, but wouldn’t: presumably I displeased the Internet God and this was His pale, sweaty judgement. Anyway, here’s this one, and hopefully from here on out it’ll be every second Thursday at 8pm Queensland time.)

Before I start, can I just say: wow. It's been six days since I published my first post, and in that time its pageviews rocketed up from one lost little view, up to seventy-five. Seventy-five people, reading what I’d written. And not just from Australia: our ever-helpful Overlord, Google, tells me a significant number of views came from America, and a small handful even originated in Europe.

This mightn't sound like a huge deal, seeing as there are websites out there that rack up millions of hits per day from all over the world, but to a tiny wannabe like me just starting out: wow. And it feels truly amazing to someone who’s greatest dream in life is to be read. So to everyone who took a chance clicking on my last post: thank you, and I hope you enjoyed it. I'd like to thank you more concretely, but until I can find a way to science high-fives through the internet, words will have to do.

We're thinking maybe voodoo?

So: onwards. I realise that it was only last week that I said I these letters wouldn't be about what I'd done today, but last night something so truly bizarre happened that I feel it can't go unmentioned. I promise all of this is true, no matter how unlikely it seems: indeed, though I scarce believe it myself, I know in my bones that it was no dream or fancy, but pure, horrible fact. I was at home with my family: just chilling. Relaxing. Chillaxing. Suddenly, a knock resounded on my door.

Now, living as I do in a neighbourhood with, just, all of the criminals, I’m normally a little uncomfortable answering an unexpected summons to the door, or “murder-hole” as it’s known in these parts. But there was something about this night. Something…other.  I had to obey. I rushed to the door and opened it, hesitantly at first, but then with a grim alacrity.

The eyes of a tiny girl looked up at me from the face of a monster. Her…its clothes, no doubt once quite pretty, now were bitter rags, twisted and torn by the ravages of some unfathomable journey. Its flesh was greyed in parts, riven by great wounds that no longer bled. Beyond the pool of light spilling from my home lurked…something. Something that watched, and waited. I sensed the creature on my step was its doing somehow, through some vile perversion of inhuman biologies, and I waited with bated breath for the tiny ghast to speak, knowing even before it did the only thing it would want – the only thing it could want. The thing which I was compelled, by forces greater than myself, to surrender to it.

Candy

Cause it was Halloween.

Surprise!

And apparently we do that here. 

All throughout my childhood, Halloween was kind of a non-entity: one of those fun-looking foreign holidays that we in the land of dirt and spiders weren't lucky enough to get. Sure, we all remember the occasional two-dollar shop trying its luck and stocking some outrageously-terrible plastic skulls and floppy rubber bats, but on the whole the closest we got to Halloween was finding snakes living in our fruit loops. Recently though, the holiday has started to gain traction. Here a few disappointed kids wandered around as toilet-paper mummies collecting looks of confusion instead of lollies; there a birthday party strays too close to the 31^st and finds itself saddled a “spooky” theme; and just about every year talking heads blab ever onwards about the loss of Australian culture, the Americanisation of our country and all sorts of other things grumpy old people like to complain about.

And up until very recently, I agreed with them.

It wasn’t our holiday, I said; it belonged to the American cultural hegemony I thought, since even then I knew saying cultural hegemony out loud would be a total dick move. We didn’t even want it – clearly it was nothing more than big corporate interests looking to turn Australia into America Lite and skim a nice, fat profit off of our nice, fat children.

Why did I feel this way? Partly it was because I was a moderately-intelligent young man just out of high school, and thus thought of myself as a never-ending font of cutting-edge, in-your-face insights (don't judge me: we've all been there); partly it was because I was apparently just born a grumpy old man.

Myself, age five.

But mostly it was jealousy. Like I said: Halloween was a non-entity in my childhood. But that doesn’t mean I wanted it to be. Every little kid growing up on American television wants to take part in this magical festival where you put on awesome costumes and get given free lollies until your blood turns into soft-drink. So if I didn’t get it, then neither should these kids, dang-nabbit.

“All right, we get it, you were a dick,” I hear you thinking, the distance between us as nothing to my fabulous telepathy. “So what.”

Firstly, ouch. Bloggers have feelings too you know. Secondly, this isn’t the story of one guy being a jerk. This is the story of one guy learning not to be a jerk. See, something happened to me when that little zombie girl came trick-or-treating, her eyes so full of hope and excitement. Something that was frankly awful.

I had to tell her no. We didn’t have any candy: I didn’t know we were doing Halloween here. Sorry kiddo, but here’s your spirit back: sorry it’s in so many pieces.

Watching her tiny face flood with disappointment as I stammered apologies was one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever had to do.

And then I had to do it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Everyone in our neighbourhood was doing Halloween, and I was the one grinchy bastard who refused to play along. And man, being that guy sucks. That’s the night when I realised that Halloween was coming: in little bits and pieces for now, but only in the same way that a couple of pebbles herald a landslide. And sure, it came too late for me to dress up as a dinosaur without being weird; sure, I’d never get to know what it’s like to wander around the streets at night, trawling for candy until my little heart cries uncle. But now I have someone who will.

Now I realise that we, the adults of this nation, get to pick a side. We can give in to the inevitable, and have a blast dressing our kids up as Transformers, or we can stand firm against it, proudly harrumphing as we post passive-aggressive Facebook statuses and shout at kids to get off our lawn and do something Australian, like toad-hockey.

I know which side I’m picking.

It's the one with free candy.