Last Halloween, my 9-year-old grandson dressed up in a “Star Trek” uniform, pinned on a “communicator” medallion and sallied forth on a candy quest, armed with a “phaser” pistol.

Fresh-faced, stalwart, chivalrous, even a little angelic, Alexander looked like a cadet in some army of virtue more than a kid in search of Milky Ways, Tootsie Rolls, Kit Kats, Skittles and M&Ms. He was a paragon of the innocent lads sent off to war by greedy, power-hungry old men since the beginning of time, propelled by lofty ideals and promises of glory.

On Massachusetts Street, where he’d appeared last Halloween as a Roman gladiator, he encountered a menacing figure wearing the black mask and cape of Darth Vader in front of the BrewHawk establishment. A duel commenced, with Alex the Good leaping nimbly like a springbok to avoid the slashings of his opponent’s laser sword, and Vader himself gamely executing 360s to dodge the deadly rays from Alex’s pistol. I wished his dad, a helicopter pilot stationed in Iraq, had been here to witness his son’s performance that night.

Like a pair of ballet dancers they lunged and pranced, fixing one another with steely stares. It was hard to tell which was the kid and which the adult. A crowd gathered and urged them on, dazzled by their ducks, feints and graceful pirouettes.

At last, wearied and perhaps suddenly inspired by the waste and futility of strife, Alex issued an ultimatum. If Vader kept fighting, he would push a “self-destruct” button on his pistol and obliterate them both. The champ of the Dark Side considered his options and prudently laid down his sword. For once, peace won over violence. Good and Evil were reconciled. Vader and Alex congratulated one another and parted in honor.

We left downtown with Alex’s Halloween sack sagging, and repaired to our former Old West Lawrence neighborhood for more booty. This was no mere door-to-door scrounge for him. It was a pilgrimage. Instead of the conventional “thank you,” he offered the Vulcan Spock’s benediction, “Live long and prosper” when he received his treats. More than once, those words drew an adult fan from his easy chair to the door for some “Star Trek” palaver.

My grandson is on the threshold between childhood and adolescence, still an uncorrupted knight jousting in a fantasy world in which virtue triumphs. He spends his days in visionary war games and when he goes to bed the enemy has been vanquished. His sleep is not yet troubled by popularity fears, pimples and other teenage demons. Ahead lie bullies and bosses, anxieties about money and health and life’s many disenchantments.

Alex is near the point when Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown discovers that the pious folk who teach him his catechism by day worship the devil in the woods at night. Already Lara Croft, the nubile tomb raider, is beginning to rival the “Star Trek” crew for his affections. He’s discovering the appeal of forbidden knowledge, testing limits, mocking convention and the sweet treats of transgression.

Above all, he’s at that pre-adolescent stage when a word such as “toilet paper,” can provoke him to a fit of convulsive laughter. His current reading features Captain Underpants in “The Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy,” an epic that delights in grammatical improprieties and misspellings: “Onse upon a time ther was two cool kids.”

George and Harold are poor students, but they possess a higher intelligence not measured by school standards. They change a sign in the school bathroom to recommend washing hands in the john and teach their classmates how to make “squishes” (packs of ketchup placed beneath toilet seats). That kind of intelligence. And yet these two misfits are also “born to save the planet from the nasty forces of unrelenting evil.”

When Alex asked me if I could write such a book for him, I was flattered and suddenly possessed by a childish dream of fame and success. I ought to be capable of coming up with something as good as a book with the subtitle, “The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets,” with its boast of “Squishy Action! Smooshy Horror! Gooey Laughs!”

“You and I can write it together,” I proclaimed. “All we need is a superhero and a couple of kids in trouble who need his help. We can do better than Dav Pilkey. Think of the fortune we can make.”

I’d gotten carried away. Alex gave me a look of sadness and infinite disappointment.

“George, all you can think about is money,” he said. “I don’t think you’re ready for this.”

Still the disciple of goodness and virtue. No doubt there’s something that even a jaded granddad can learn from a kid like this.

George Gurley, who lives in rural Baldwin, writes a regular column for the Journal-World.