On the 31st October last year, I was sitting at home watching the film Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis – she was sat on the sofa opposite – when suddenly, I heard the doorbell go.
I went outside and looked up and down the street and I couldn’t find it anywhere.
Strange, I thought.
Suddenly, from behind the bushes, I heard the sound of children giggling and then a shout: “Trick or treat?”
At which point, I did the only thing I could… I chased them down the street until they dropped my doorbell and fled into the dark night.
Picking it up, I saw that it had been slightly damaged. I took it indoors and closed the door behind me. Just then, I heard…
Knock, knock!
“Who’s there?”
“Doorbell repair man!”
I could see the irony.
Wow, that was quick, I thought. I opened the door but didn’t invite him in for obvious reasons. I just left him on the doorstep to repair the doorbell.
When he finished, he told me that he remembered the times when children used to just ring doorbells and run away, not run off with the doorbell. He also said there had been a spate of doorbell thefts that evening from ‘trick or treaters’ and that he had spent the entire evening following the ‘little rascals’ in his van and repairing broken and replacing lost doorbells.
After I paid him, I went back indoors and heard some giggling from across the street. I looked out of the window.
And there I saw the same group of children standing around the doorbell repair man’s van with their arms outstretched and palms open wide as he paid them the money I had just given him.
“Thanks, dad,” they said. “That’s more money than what we’d normally get just trick or treating.”
They climbed into the back of his van and he drove away down the street.
‘Little rascals,’ indeed!
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Russ Writes 
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