OK, it’s time for a little confession. This time it comes from my former five-year-old and deeply Machiavellian self. Do you ever have one of those stories your parents tell because it’s just so funny and yet they seem to not have any idea what really happened? This is one those.

It was Halloween and I was with a friend, a little boy by the name of Nathan, and my mother was trucking us around the neighborhood to gather candy at our town’s annual trick-or-treating event. I can’t for the life of me remember what I was dressed as but I do remember what my tiny companion was wearing. He had gone out that night all decked up as a Ghost Buster. It was super cute. As a treat my mother allowed us to sit in the way back of her little Nissan, where the trunk should have been if it had one. We were nestled under the seats in our own little private world which is not the best idea when one of the children involved is gifted.

“Hey Nathan! I wonder what’s in our glow sticks…” I pulled the green shining tube out of my Jack O’Lantern bucket. “You should bite it and find out!”

Nathan was always eating things well beyond the age this was appropriate. This was largely due to shitheads like myself asking him to. With one good snap he cracked that little fucker open and was COVERED, and I do mean covered, in iridescent green glowing goo. He’d basically made himself into a night light.

Obviously when my mother went back to fetch us she was horrified to find Nathan back there lighting up the night. The joke was Slimer got him.