Halloween Goofus

Reading “Goofus and Gallant” won’t make a kid a better person, of course. It’s almost entirely about encouraging good public behavior.

Let me set the scene: Last Halloween, a little after 6PM. 

On my street in Manhattan, Halloween is big deal. The local block associations have organized street closures, people decorate their townhouses, stoops are threaded with fake spider’s webs, there are candles and pumpkins at nearly every house. The streets and sidewalk are thronged with kids and parents and the usual way-too-old-for-Trick-or-Treating kids. 

I am sitting on one of the lower steps of my front stoop, passing out candy. The stairs leading up to the front door are too treacherously steep for a child in a plush costume with limited sight-lines and, often, a tail or something to trip on, and my Household Umbrella insurance policy doesn’t cover what I know would be a nasty lawsuit from heartbroken parents who would blame me for the tumble their child would surely take, so on the advice of counsel and my financial advisor I have elected to move the candy distribution node to the lowest possible step. 

But 6PM is Peak Halloween and the number of kids in costumes, arms outstretched, is a little overwhelming, especially when you’re on the bottom step, without a front door to protect you form the sea of short, oddly garbed kids — often totally masked — who seem, in the twilight, like a toddler zombie mob from The Walking Dead.

One boy, about eight or nine, took advantage of the overwhelming numbers by putting his grasping, Spiderman-gloved hand directly into the candy bag, removing a Spiderfistful of fun-size Kit-Kats, Snickers, and Reese’s. 

“Hey!” I shouted as he scuttled away, “don’t be a Goofus!”

He stopped and looked at me quizzically. “What?” he asked.

“A Goofus! Like, from the old comic strip, “Goofus and Gallant?” From Highlights Magazine? Don’t they have that anymore?”

But by then I had lost the moral immediacy of the situation. I had triggered the immutable law of, If you’re the one explaining what you mean, you’ve lost the argument. Also: the kid’s father was starting to get interested in the goings-on, and I had the distinct feeling that it was possible we’d both end up in the morning paper, or worse, Twitter.

So I waved the kid off and busied myself with the other, polite, goblins and Elsa’s that were gathered around the candy stash.

For the record: ”Goofus and Gallant" is a recurring feature of Highlights Magazine, a children’s publication. It’s designed to teach moral lessons and encourage good behavior in children through contrasting examples.

Goofus tends to be impulsive, disrespectful, and thoughtless in his actions (in my childhood, I was often called a Goofus) while Gallant is polite, thoughtful, and considerate. Each strip presents a scenario in which the two characters respond differently, highlighting the positive behavior of Gallant and the negative behavior of Goofus. You can always tell which one is which because all of the characters in the Gallant drawings are smiling and happy, while the others in the Goofus panels wear expressions of unhappiness, mortification, and dismay.

“Goofus and Gallant” isn’t about the big stuff — morality, goodness, that sort of thing. It’s mostly focused on the small issues of day to day life, like saying “please” and giving up your seat on the bus for an old person, not interrupting, and not grabbing candy directly from the generous man’s candy stash.

In that way, “Goofus and Gallant” is sort of a kid-centered example of James Q. Wilson’s “Broken Window Theory,” which posited that a neat and orderly neighborhood — where broken windows are repaired promptly and graffiti is quickly removed — leads to more peace and tranquillity up the chain. A kid who acts politely and knows not to be grabby-grabby contributes to an overall improvement of child behavior generally. A kid who doesn’t gets called “Goofus” and has to endure a lot of dirty looks.

Reading “Goofus and Gallant” won’t make a kid a better person, of course. It’s almost entirely about encouraging good public behavior. What happens in a person’s heart, or conscience, is left unexamined. For all we know, beatific little Gallant might be a closet psychopath or secret Ted Bundy. (His smile, to be honest, is a little creepy.) 

Still, after a few months of very Goofus-y behavior — to put it very mildly — from young people on university campuses and on my front stoop, a movement to reform public behavior seems like a great place to start.