All around town evidence of the bandit’s coruscating reign of sparkle could be seen on glinting faces that puckered in a scowl whenever you asked them why they were wearing glitter.

During a bear attack, one has at least some idea of how he will react (make friends with the bear via Doritos, play dead, run away in panic, scream as a mama bear attacks your papa that this is all his fault because you pleaded with your dad to take you to the Disney World instead of hanging out in the woods acting like the industrial revolution never occurred). During a glitter attack, playing dead will only leave you more glittered.

Only those who have lived through one—been attacked by bears or bombed by glitter—can say for sure how they will react. Having been the victim of a glitter bomb attack this past weekend at The Terrace Hostel in Antigua, Guatemala—I now know that everything I thought I knew about glitter bombs and my reaction was as wrong as lunar rain.

Let’s start at the beginning . . .

Whenever I return to Antigua, Guatemala, I ask my cautes what’s nueva above the cobble stones and without fail I’m told tales of the new eccentrically unique personalities hopping around town. This trip back, people all over Antigua sparkled. If it was not the sparkle of free living, then it was the sparkle of half the town being covered in glitter.

“There’s a guy from Norway,” one of my friends said trying to get glitter out of his hair, “Who’s been glitter bombing everyone.”

“He looks like a Norwegian Axel Rose,” another friend said, prior to pledging to run him out of town like Santa at an Easter party.

Antigua had a glitter bandit on the loose all right and people spoke of him in varying degrees of outrage. All around town evidence of the bandit’s coruscating reign of sparkle could be seen on glinting faces that puckered in a scowl whenever you asked them why they were wearing glitter.

Hummus, was the glitter bandit’s name, and like most Antigua lore, there was some debate as to his nationality and backstory. Some seemed sure he was gay, while others swore he was a lover of glitter and the ladies. One friend told me he was English while another swore he was the love child of an orgy of Norwegian metal bands.

Never wanting to miss out on the opportunity to give a moral to this stochastic story of life, I declared that if I were ever to find myself glitter bombed by this bandit, that I would calmly take out the canister I carried with me and pepper spray the shit out of him.

One girl fond of gasping nearly choked on her chocobanano, “Would you really pepper spray him?”

“Yes,” I responded, now sure of it, “I would.” For someone had to teach Norwegian Axel Rose that it was not okay to roll around invading people’s life with glitter. This was Guatemala after all, and the US government did not overthrow the democratically elected leader, install a rightist dictator and plunge the country into four decades of civil war just so dudes from Norway could come and throw glitter at people.

These days in Antigua even the most testosterone’d among us appeared as they’d been rolling around with Lady Gaga and the Sparkle Fairy. The bigger the muscles, the bigger their outrage.

Ask them “what happened?” and watch as the outrage in their eyes to matched their fulgurating skin—they’d been glittered, taken a dozen showers, but somehow, still sparkled.

Would anyone believe that in the end my swagger train of bravado would be derailed by a handful of glistening dust and that when it was my turn to be glittered my hand, instead of reaching for pepper spray, would rise to give Norwegian Axel Rose a high five?

Sometimes, I learned, glitter expresses what nothing else can . . .

My glittering happened after closing time at The Terrace Hostel where I had just had a show with an astoundingly talented uke-wielding musician from Michigan named Marissa. This was Saturday, and since I had met her that Thursday, we had been playing and writing music all day, which to me is akin to winning ALL the bingos while eating ALL the pizza with ALL the animal toppings—a magical, musical weekend.

We had also managed to last minute book three shows for Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We played so intuitively together that at one point I asked the ghost of Bob Marley, “Could be love?” But this was just a musical crush, and we know how those go. It turned out that Marissa was back in Antigua because she was still in love with her ex-boyfriend from El Salvador. So I asked Bob Marley again, “Could be the best musical friends that anyone every had?” and he said “Ya man.”

This was also around the time a friend and fellow travel blogger, Josh Brownlee arrived in town simply because he is the type of guy that when you tell him in Toronto, “you should totally come to Guatemala” he actually rolls up. Since I lost a beard bet to Josh last year, I finally paid half of my end of the bargain and played “I’m a Little Teapot” with my underwear on my head (my cleanest pair). In the company of old, recent and new friends, days filled with jam sessions, and nights filled with shows, I was having the most fun ever since meeting Marisa. Towards the end of this crescendo of melodic joy, glitter found me.

I was sitting at a table with someone I thought looked like He-Man, oblivious that my He-Man was another’s Norwegian Axel Rose, was the glitter bomber, was about to bomb me. I was digging the conversation, making a pretty Panamanian woman laugh beside me, singing slow afterhour songs, and conversing with my friend Maggie between her make out sessions with He-Man.

Then came the diamond rain, the monsoon of fairy dust, the whirlwind of fireflies flocking—He-Man turned out to be the glitter bomber and before we could say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!, our whole table was glitter bombed!

But what was this feeling that I was feeling? Was it love? No, it wasn’t love, Bobby Marley. Was it disdain? No, it was far from disdain. This feeling flew in the face of everything I suspected I would do should I be glitter bombed. The feeling felt like the illegitimate love child of elation and admiration. Now only was I not mad, but I felt given the circumstances, glitter bombing had been the right thing to do, and I shook the glitter bomber’s hand.

Maybe the monotonous world needs people who shake things up with a handful of sparkles, giving the sometimes dull sheen of life something to sparkle about. Plenty of people were outraged at this guy, when I heard about him I was not on his team, but now I think I might be.

Maybe it’s Antigua’s fault. Another traveler blogger friend, Jen, had recently come into town and we were talking about what made us keep returning to Antigua. I concluded with this, that in Antigua I feel like I am the best version of myself. Other places are great, but I am happier, calmer, more compassionate and wistful in Antigua. I arrived in Antigua with a New York mentality of “how dare someone throw glitter at people!” and after only six weeks back, my perspective had shifted to accept even glitter bandits into the fold of people I was happy to high-five.

Later that night, in my bedroom, I ran my fingernails over my scalp and watched as a blue shower of silver sparkling rained majestically onto my floor. It was like being transported into the world on the other side of my rainbow. Then my phone buzzed and a text timed too perfectly to tell about flashed on my screen and my night got better than I imagined an already perfect day could.

Thank you glitter bandit, for making the world sparkle.