Things sure are different these days.

These days, at the first sign of a bully parents jump in to protect their kids, and counselors are called in to heal the bully’s wounded inner child. But when I was a kid, every neighborhood had a bully and no one did much about it. Ours was Rodney Keagle. He pushed everyone around, especially me. It started when I was seven and Rodney was a couple years older. For Halloween Rodney had on a dog costume and I just pointed out that his name rhymed with Beagle. It seemed harmless enough, but he got really mad and put me at the top of his "list". I did my best to stay out of Rodney's way after that, but it's not easy to completely avoid a kid who lives on your same block. I lost count of how many times he beat me up.

These days, it’s easy to go online and figure out if something’s true or not. But when I was a kid, we all believed Rodney when he told us about ghosts. Just before Halloween, a couple years after the "Beagle" incident, we were riding home on the school bus and we were talking about ghosts. Rodney said the reason there were ghosts was because if someone was buried alive their spirit couldn't "move on", and they were doomed to haunt the Earth forever. I guess because it got such a reaction, he told that story every Halloween for years after that, until one year I got tired of it and called him a liar in front of the other kids. He didn't like that at all.

These days, people will do just about anything for their dogs. There’s health insurance for dogs, dog psychiatrists and people even have microchips put in their dogs so if they run off and end up at the animal shelter they can get them back. But when I was a kid, if a dog went missing it either came back or it didn't and there wasn't much you could do about it. Lucy, my two-year-old Collie went missing on Halloween, the day after I called Rodney a liar. Looking back, I doubt he had anything to do with it, but at the time he told me that because I called him a liar he was going to prove that he was telling the truth. I still remember him sneering as he said, "You’ll see, because after what I did to Lucy, her spirit won't be able to move on."

These days when a kid goes missing they do everything except declare a national emergency. They drain swamps and dredge ponds and sift through landfills and put their picture on TV crime shows, and when it's all over they make a TV movie about it. But when I was a kid, they just put up a few posters and searched the woods and went door to door asking questions. And after a few weeks if the kid didn’t turn up, that was it. Rodney went missing one Halloween night when we were teenagers.  They put up posters and searched the woods and went door to door asking questions.  But, he never turned up and that was it.

Oh...and that thing Rodney told us about ghosts? Not true, because it’s been 30 years and I haven't heard "boo" from him. And if what he said about ghosts was true, then I should have.