Happy Halloween!
It’s the one night a year that seems to be exclusively for kids and college students—everyone else who gets too into it just looks a little strange.
Halloween traces its roots back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, more than 2,000 years ago, when people lit bonfires and wore costumes to welcome spirits they liked and ward off the ones they didn’t. As Christianity spread, it became All Hallows’ Eve, and eventually, just Halloween.
That’s a fancy way of saying it used to be a harvest and New Year’s festival—and now little kids get candy while the big kids drink, dress weird, and make bad decisions.
But Halloween isn’t just about costumes. It’s about fear.
Fear is that racing-heart, shallow-breath feeling when you sense danger—whether it’s something in the dark or something in your head. When I was a kid, a pillow fell out of my closet in the middle of the night, and the door swung open. I’m not sure my feet even touched the floor on the way out.
Now that I’m grown—with a family, a mortgage, and aging parents—Freddy Krueger himself could crawl out of a dream and realize he’s got nothing on real life.
Real life… and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Because honestly, I’m afraid. I think most Bengals fans are.
I’ll go first:
I’m afraid I’ll spend my whole life cheering for this team and never see them win a Super Bowl. I’m afraid Joe Burrow becomes Andrew Luck 2.0—or worse, that he asks out someday. I’m afraid my kids will tell their kids, “Don’t get Grandpa started on Joe Burrow, because then he’ll talk about Andy Dalton and then Carson Palmer, and then I’ll have to talk him off the roof.”
There. I feel a little better.
Your turn.
What scares the Bengals fan in you?
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