Trick-or-Treating Heros

One of the reasons I like to write in my blog is so that I will remember something that happened. Tonight is Halloween and tonight I want to remember the 6 year old “Fireman” that came up to me and said, “trick or treat”.

I headed to Hermosa Beach after a last minute invite to join a girlfriend and her husband at a BBQ/candy hand-out/people-watching Halloween party. We walked down to the ocean and I found it surreal to watch families walking up and down the boardwalk trick or treating. The house we were at was 3 blocks to the sand down a very residential walking path and there were LA moms walking around with their kid’s candy bag in one hand and a glass on wine in the other.

After a while the trick-or-treaters started to dissipate which was good for us, as we had run out of candy. I had almost forgotten about the reason why dentists love this holiday, when a young boy about 6 years old walked up to me with his dad and said “trick-or-treat”. I looked down at this man’s son who had dressed up as a fireman for the evening and said, “Oh, I am so sorry. We just ran out of candy”. It was then, that this little fireman changed my frame of mind for the night. He looked right back at me with a sad little face, and said “Oh no! Here…take some of mine…”. As he reached into his bag and pulled out the biggest handful of candy he could grab, I started to wonder what he was doing. I chuckled a little and said, “It’s ok. You don’t have to give us your candy” and with the most concerned look on his face, he said, “But I have plenty… And someone might come up to you that doesn’t have any candy”. I was stunned. We went back and forth for a minute and my friend said she looked over at one point and thought to herself, “what is this kid trying to negotiate with Julie?”. We finally settled on him giving me one piece of candy just in case someone else came by. His father told me he is like this all the time – he is a really nice kid. That was not a nice kid…that was a kid who was going to change the world.

As he walked away, I thought about how impressed I was that this child could have the values and the concern for others that he had already developed. Yes, it was only candy, but he was so concerned that there would be someone else out there – someone who didn’t have what he had so much of and all he wanted to do was make sure that he could help change that.

I wonder if he picked out the fireman costume by himself, trying to play the role of a hero for the evening. What he didn’t know was that no matter what he had dressed up as, he was a hero tonight. And to top it all off…we had one more trick-or-treater come by…and just because of him, we didn’t have to turn them away empty handed.