Be on the Lookout

Halloween is one of the three of my least favorite "holidays" to work. The others, of course, are New Years Eve and July 4th (both crazy beyond belief, with July 4th pyrotechnics only slightly tamer than the actual gunfire on New Years). For some reason, Halloween - and the parties that result - one up most other occasions.

Don't ask me why. Maybe its the chance to dress up, and act, like someone else. Dressing up as a ghoul makes one ghoulish, having an axe in the forehead a cause for crankiness.... Who knows.

On a Halloween night in the early Eighties, a bunch of us went to a reported stabbing. Blood everywhere - real blood - lots of yelling people...what we call a "good" stabbing. Not that the stabbee thought much of it, but he was on his way to the hospital. Of course, we interviewed the others for a suspect description. I had to broadcast the following over the police radio:

"Male suspect, five ten to six feet tall, husky build...wearing a skin wig, nose glasses and a toga."

There wasn't much else to say. Several weeks later (it was the Eighties, after all) someone had their film developed, shots taken at the party. The suspect was...just like everyone had described.

He was never identified.

Glad to be home tonight.