So this year, we hit Jackie and Eric's neighborhood, and then shot across town to the Heritage Hill area. Heritage Hill is where we walk through on most of our Long Walks. The homes are enormous and beautiful, and often split up into apartments.
As one might expect, our work in the suburbs yeilded a hefty bounty of sweet goodness, while the older area wasn't as fertile, as it were. People were more chatty on the Hill, though, probably since they had fewer visitors. And they weren't busy handing candy out to five hyper kids. I talked to a resident of a rehab program, a nice lady with a "runt" of a Great Dane dog (it only came up to my waist), and some other interesting characters. People are interesting. There was one lady out in the 'burbs who cracked me up. She said to my kids "What are you? oh, you've got a light.... thingy... and the little girl! my what a cute teddy bear." Cracked me up.

Right... so i don't think i've told this story on my blog. It's about one of the coolest experiences i ever had.

Karen and i were invited to a costume party when we were living in Korea. In Korea they don't celebrate Halloween. Nobody dresses up or hands out candy... so costumes are made with whatever you can scrounge up from... like, under your bed or off some drunk guy passed out in the gutter. Karen and i chose to become ninjas. We made swords out of cardboard, which we painted sliver and black with Chinese characters like "Ghost Blade" written on them. We wore black clothes, with each of us putting a T-shirt over our head, with the neck hole serving as the eye part of the mask. It works pretty well.

So Karen's T-shirt neck hole crept open fairly soon after we got on the bus on our way to the party, but mine stayed in full on Ninja Disguise Mode with pretty much no adjustment on my part. While we were at the party, we had some really good conversations with people we'd never met, about swords, ancient culture, the yearning most Koreans have to have a unified country again... i felt like the little group we were sitting with (trying tricks like punching a candle out and some weird traditional balance wrestling thing) was really clicking. Like, group chemistry or some crap. Well, after we'd been at the party (with Korea Man, a girl dressed like the sky, a Picasso painting, and a guy in purple tights) for a couple hours, they said i should take my mask off.

I did.

I've never had anyone stare at my face the way they did. It wasn't exactly uncomfortable, but it was certainly intense. I think the rapport we'd built was as good as it was in spite of the fact that nobody could see my face. You notice people's faces when you first meet them, and you base much of your impressions on what you see there. A person's face will tell you so much about them - self-concept, hygine, temperment, age... and those impressions of me had probably already been made. The impressions must have been formed right alongside a subconscious idea of my face. And then they got to see my face, and it was something different, most likely, than they'd imagined.

I recommend the experience.

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