So this little dude--eight years old at best, the wide gap between his buckteeth filled with caramel or some other gooey substance--rang my doorbell on Monday. He didn't have to. He saw me standing right there with a bowl of candy in my hand. But he wanted to. It was part of his shtick, as it turned out. And he didn't ring it just once either. He rang it and rang it and rang it. He was so excited.

He wore blue jeans, cuffed, and a little pair of work boots. He had donned a red and black flannel shirt and had a clipboard in his fist. From it dangled his bag of goodies. A man-sized tool belt wrapped twice around his slim hips. The belt was stuffed with screwdrivers and a pair of dikes. I almost missed it because it had swung around behind him, but dangling from his leather tool belt was a butt set. And sitting on a head that looked way too big for his body was a well-worn, white safety helmet with a faded blue emblem in the shape of a bell.

I opened the door, and as The Blue Fairy, Batman and two small versions of the guys from Scary Movie lined up behind him, the little guy looked up, beamed, and said, "Ask me who I am."

Playing along, I said, "OK, who are you?"

He reached up and rang the bell again. I wanted to swat his sticky little hand and poke a toothpick between those big buckteeth to snatch out that piece of goo, but the swelling crowd behind him began to grow impatient and started to yell the customary greeting for Halloween. The moms out on the sidewalk stopped talking and craned their necks to watch.

The little guy started to stomp his feet.

"Ask me who I am! Ask me who I am!" he demanded.

I asked again. He reached up, rang the bell and said with his best Jim Carrey impersonation, "Cable Guy!"

I looked again at his helmet with the faded emblem and at his butt set, and at the joke he didn't even know he told, I laughed so hard I scared him away.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com.