Finding America

Me and Tarah

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Sometimes when I look back on my life in Britain, it seems like it all happened to someone else. As if I didn’t actually grow up constantly surrounded by red post boxes, Cadbury bars, and Noel Edmonds. A lot of how I lived my life back then is not how I live it now. Take, for instance, Halloween. 

As a child of 80s Britain, I used to love trick or treating. In England, this specifically meant dressing up in something monstrous like Dracula fangs, ghost sheets, or eighties fashionwear. And we’d go around the neighborhood, regaling residents with the words “the sky is blue, the grass is green, can you spare a penny for Halloween?”... or just "trick or treat" if the person had vacant eyes.

The point is, we went door-to-door—kind of like how politicians do in a final effort to lose voters. Except we were children; our only fundraising goal was to raise money for football stickers. Most people generously gave sweets, sure. Sometimes even their last Rolo. But I was mostly in it for the money: the ten pence coins, twenty pence coins. Occasionally, even fifty pence coins. And if you caught her on a good day, Aunt Sophia would dish out the holy grail of legal tender: the one pound coin. That was like breaking into Fort Knox, but then so was entering her house, which had four Rottweilers.

As I recount these memories so many years later, I worry that Americans might think I've made the whole thing up. For a country so widely associated with the acquisition of money, America rarely, if ever, gives it to Halloweeners. And don’t get me wrong; now that I’m fully grown up, I don’t really have a stake in any of this. Especially now that I’m not a vampire… hahahaha… sorry.

But as I stand today on the other side of the door, I can’t help but think that a deeply important memo got Lost in the Pond. Watch the video to find out more.

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