Rager

Halloween in my neighborhood is quite a to-do, not in the drunken "my costume is I'm barely wearing clothes" vein, but in the "my, what a lot of small children live around here" vein.  [For those of you who are keeping track, the Upstairs Baby was dressed as Elmo.  I am unconvinced that he even knows who Elmo is, not so much because he is small, but because his parents are French. Do the French care about la Rue de Sesame?  I couldn't say.] 

There was a lot of very loud "Halloween music" (which I compelled to put in quotes because I disagree that it even exists as a genre) blasting from across the street for many hours and a veritable parade of small costumed citizens and their tall minders passing by. In my curmudgeonly fashion, I was opting out of the candy-fueied revelry, drowning out "Monster Mash" with a second viewing of "Prime Suspect" on Netflix, and trying to sear a pork tenderloin in preparation for the arrival of my dashing, uncostumed dinner guest. 

Because the children in my neighborhood are very small indeed (there is a joke that goes like this: Q: What does every kid in Noe Valley get for his 5th birthday?  A: A house in Marin.)  Halloween simmered down early, leaving us to enjoy our tenderloin in comparative peace.  I sort of forgot it was Halloween after a while.

This morning though, the never-ending windblown trash pile that accumulates around and beyond our front gate included evidence of a big night.  In addition to a curious amount of torn up newspaper, there was the telltale bright orange of a Reece's peanut butter cup wrapper (fun size) and,  in the middle of my driveway, more surprisingly and rather disturbingly, a pair of men's underpants.