...and *nobody* wants to see that

Mark and I went for a nightly stroll last night. We live smack dab in suburbia where the houses all look the same, and I'm embarrassed to admit that sometimes, I get a little lost. It's an older community, "mid-century modern" as my friend Michelle calls it, so the houses aren't identical, just similar enough to confuse me a bit.

It confuses Mark, too.

"I have no idea," he said, when we came to a corner and I asked if we should go left or right. "I don't recognize any of this."

I shined my flashlight around, and the corner house suddenly looked familiar.

"Right," I told Mark. I nodded toward the corner house and said, "Remember that place? You went trick or treating there a couple years ago."

Mark looked at the place, shook his head and told me he didn't remember it.

"It had a haunted tunnel," I reminded him. "You had to go through the tunnel to earn your candy."

And suddenly, the light went on.

"I HATED that place!" he yelled.

"What did you hate so much?" I asked.

"Umm, EVERYTHING," he said. "People were scaring us inside! I hated them. I hated those two words. Haunted. Tunnel. What makes you think I'd like THAT? I hated it all!"

His outrage made me giggle. He'd seemed a little nervous about going in at the time, but not like this.

"And they wouldn't let me take a flashlight in," he grumbled.

"They didn't want you to ruin the illusion," I said. "They didn't want you to see them up close."

"Did they want to see me wetting my pants?" Mark asked. "Because that's what they WOULD have seen, if I had a flashlight."

I couldn't even giggle, I straight up laughed out loud.

"You didn't really wet your pants, did you?" I asked, when I could finally catch my breath.

"No," Mark admitted. "But I was scared."

"OK," I said. "No more haunted tunnels this, year. I promise."

"I don't care," he said. "I'm going to Tristan's party anyway."

I nodded. I didn't remember the story the same way Mark did, but last year's Halloween now made more sense. I couldn't figure out why, given parental permission and almost unlimited freedom, Mark hadn't run off further to collect free candy with his friend Jonah. Instead, he and Jonah kept slinking back to the house, under the guise of scaring littler kids.

But now I understood. It wasn't independence Mark longed for, it was actually protection. From haunted tunnels, scary adults and publicly wetting his pants.

Huh...can't say I blame the kid!