I drive my kids to school most mornings. It’s a time to reconnect with the kids, where there are no Nintendo DS games or friends calling on the phone to distract us. Sometimes, my older son is eating a granola bar as a quick breakfast. The conversation ranges from logistics (who will pick them up in the afternoon) to homework (did it get done) to whether we all got enough sleep the night before (NOT). If I’m lucky, my 10-year old will have some interesting questions about how the world works. If I’m really lucky, my 12-year old will say more than two words.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked the kids what they wanted to be for Halloween. I have a series of pictures from each Halloween since they were pre-schoolers. They sit on the front steps to the house in their costumes, next to the carved pumpkins, right before the sun sets in the late afternoon. When they were younger, they favored traditional roles–fireman, construction worker, policeman, cowboy, witch (a bit of a stretch for my younger son but he played it beautifully). I broke down one year and got a Pokemon character costume for my older son–a nod to the then current world of a seven-year old. The next year turned into other characters like Ninjas.

So this year, I was surprised by the response on what to be for Halloween. It came out of the mouth of my older son, tired of the homework that a 7th grader gets. He replied, "How about Student on Strike?" The back seat was chortling with laughter. I pictured my kids on the picket line wearing sandwich boards with messages registering their complaints on the school system. Actually, it’s alot more pleasant than thinking about teachers on strike doing the same thing.

This got the wheels turning for the younger one.

"Do you know what’s cheap?"

He has reached the age where teenage vernacular is creeping into his vocabulary. I knew he wasn’t referring to a low cost item.

"No, what’s cheap?"

"When kids go around the neighborhood once and then change costumes and go around again."

"Kids really do that?"

"Yeah, Johnny next door did that last year."

There is a scam artist in every community, even in our own neighborhood. I was secretly admiring my next door neighbor’s kid for having the gumption to go around the neighborhood twice, in the cold dark night, just for some extra candy. Seems like he could have conned his parents out of much more in the comfort of his own home.

I’ll be watching for Johnny this year, coming around in a second costume. And chuckling when I see him a second time.