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31 October 2025 - Roma

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"Do you have any Montecristo cigars?"
"No, the Chinese buy them all."
"Okay, so what else do you have from the Caribbean?"
Kids come running in dressed as witches, "trick or treat!"
"We have Fonseca."
And, as the children leave, "This is not our culture."
And so I say thank you, it's mine. I appreciate you humoring them.

On subsequent thought I think he's wrong and I think I'm wrong. On subsequent thought I should have led with the latter. Rome, Halloween, Dia de Los Muertes. We are just participants in a line of culture. It's not the right culture. It's not the wrong culture. It's just the culture of this time. Kids dress up in costumes and assume an identity for a day. If it works they can carry that identity for the rest of their days. If it works, why not? Just don't require me to believe past Hallowen that you are Batman. Or a woman. I was a woman for Halloween once. I tried on the costume. I got treats for it. I was beautiful. It was fun, but no adult claimed it was real.

Rome had some damn good holidays where you didn't have be yourself for a day. Valentine's day, for example. I'd like to tell that cigar salesmen that the problem is not children pretending, but that we're expected to believe adult who do. Not just for a day, but forever. Pretending expands the mind. Its great for kids to imagine and it's also great for us to tell them tomorrow that they are not. You dream you are Batman? On November 1st I show you path to an engineering school, like GA tech. You believe you can be a woman when you are a man or a man when you are a woman, let me help you to love yourself as you are and appreciate that that's great.