Devil's Night

Some boys armed themselves with eggs, toilet paper and Nair bombs (an ingenious spin on the water balloon, combining the traditional device with a hair removing chemical – it also made for decent Molotov cocktail if you ever got into a real pinch). We dressed in the same costumes we did every year - a nightmarish version of Robin Hood and his merry men, complete with wooden swords, shields, clubs, bats, ball-and-chains, whips, slings, pepper spray, pellet-pistols, hand-me-down folding knives and all the other melee weapons of suburban youth. We were beyond thunderdome. We were Clockwork Orange Droogs for a single night while, three hundred and sixty four others sunsets found us subdued by Beethoven’s Ninth. The scene was demonstrative and glorious. We were pocket-protector, four-eyed terrorists bringing hammers to a thumb-wrestling match. And while there were lame ducks in our rank and file, big Dave, who’d been dubbed our Little John, and me, who sported the best equipment, kept our group nimble and our battles decisively vicious.