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Category: Holidays / Topics: Birthdays & Annivesaries Halloween Memories

Trick or Treat

by Dan Seagren

Posted: October 26, 2014

A Halloween birthdate led to some tricks and many treats…

My birth date was on Halloween, 1927. That later involved some tricks but a lot of treats. Let me share some tricks I no longer do. My teenage grand daughter does our 14 steps down the stairs in a flash. I take one step at a time, holding on to the railing because we don’t have an elevator.

I recently bought two golf clubs to supplement the rusty ones. Now they sit nestled in a corner of our storage room for years, thanks to chemotherapy which forbids me to venture out onto uneven territory. Subsequently they were rejected by my grandson who would rather juggle.

Don’t tell anyone but when I first got my driver’s license, two of us would meander down main street without a driver. How? I would lie down on the bench seat (remember those?) and steer, gingerly press on the gas pedal while my friend sat up straight in the back seat telling me which way to go or stop (stick shift, too).

On Saturday mornings as a youngster (before I could drive), we went downtown to the Rescue Mission. One of the games we played was to see who could find a Bible verse the quickest. The leader would announce the chapter and verse, yell GO and zoom. Today I find it difficult to turn pages in books, newspapers, magazines much less those ultra thin Bible pages. I’d for sure come in last if I tried.

While teaching college many years ago, I went out to watch the baseball team practice. One of the players, with a smirk on his face, said: Here’s a bat. Give it a try. I smiled back, took the bat, and promptly whacked every pitch. Today, I might be able to lift a bat, maybe hit one out of ten.

The other day my computer played a trick on me. I downloaded a program designed to give me a helping hand. When finished, it didn’t help one iota but surreptitiously put four or five other programs into my computer. They removed some of what I had (where they put it I still don’t know) but one of those downloads was (for me) impossible to delete so there it sits grinning at me as I work around it.

So, tricks are ageless, ever present, at times unsolvable but when we wallow in their treachery we sometimes forget to swallow our treats. Doesn’t Halloween in a sense combine tricks and treats so they complement each other rather than conflict? Or is that pushing that holiday a bit too far?



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Dan Seagren is an active retiree whose writings reflect his life as a Pastor, author of several books, and service as a Chaplain in a Covenant Retirement Community.

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Posted: October 26, 2014   Accessed 132 times

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