Vampire grimace

'Tick or teat?' 

'Hello there. Oooo..., can we start with a trick?' 

Vampire grin. 

Me: 'Don't you have a trick? You can't say trick or treat if you don't have a trick.'

Vampire grimace.

Me: 'I guess your outfit is your trick; you do look very scary.'

A brimming basket of wrapped sweets is magically produced from behind my back and the two young Asian brother and sister vampire team politely take one each before I say they can have a few each, a direction they don't seem to have any difficulty understanding.

Take Two --

'Trick or treat?'

'Ummmm... trick; if you have a trick, that is?'

Chorus of hees and shees: 'We have a trick. Go!'

He: 'What do you call a girl on a...'

She: 'Not a girl, a woman.'

He: 'What do you call a woman on a tennis court?'

This is more of a joke than a trick, technically, but it's also more than a grimace and I'm happy to be more than a sweet dispenser. I give the joke a good few moments consideration.

Me: 'I don't know. Not much of a one for tennis, I'm afraid' (my own little joke there). No one laughs.

Hees and shees together scream: 'Annette!'

Me: (a beat to get it) 'Ah! Very good. Yes. Nets are on tennis courts. Excellent.'

The treat basket is again hastily produced and six keen brown hands dive in. No need to prompt this young Polynesian family to take more than one.

How funny that the sister thought the joke didn't work as well with a girl as a woman. Perhaps she couldn't imagine a girl called Annette; it is rather a womanly name. Or perhaps she thought that because I was so clearly a woman and so faaaaaaaaaar from my own girlhood I'd better appreciate the joke if a woman was featured in it rather than a girl.

Vampire grimace.

Our very own vampires, etc., one Halloween past.