Jamie Patterson Managing EditorI could hardly contain myself the day of the annual fall festival at my school.
It was held on a Friday evening so the entire day at school was spent with much anticipation of what the night would hold.
There would be pony rides and a petting zoo. There were an assortment of game stations and prize giveaways. There would be a hay ride and a pumpkin carving station. There would even be a haunted house and a ghostly wood trail.
My mother agreed that since she would be at work that night I could ride with a friend to the festivities. After school, I was to ride home with them and get in my costume before heading back to my school for the fun to begin.
We were finally dismissed when I almost exploded with excitement. I was already a naturally hyper child so it didn’t take much to get me going.
I was to dress up like a witch, and my friend was going to go as a movie star. Her little brother wanted to go as Dracula.
“Hey, we could make your hair look like that Dracula we saw on television,” I said, pushing his hair back. “All we have to do is wet it and put a bunch of hairspray in it. It will stay slicked down.”
He agreed to do it, and it didn’t look half bad when we were done.
“We can do something else too,” I said, looking for some face paint. “We can paint your forehead with one of those, I think you call it a widow’s peak. Then you would really look like him.”
I never could find any face paint. So I grabbed the next best thing...a Sharpie marker. Within seconds, my friend’s little brother looked just like Bela Lugosi.
When we arrived at the fall festival, I couldn’t decide what to do first. My friend’s mother said she would be back in a couple of hours to get us so we took off into the night, ready for some ghouls and goblins.
Well, it’s safe to say the night didn’t go as planned.
I took my place on the hayride, but I only got to enjoy it for a few minutes. Some kid next to me apparently had a hay allergy and forgot to tell anybody. He sneezed on me the entire time. After a bump, he even fell on me in the middle of a sneeze.
Hopping off the hay trailer, I made my way to the basketball shoot. Making a basket, I was able to get a bag of candy. I was so excited to tear into a Sugar Daddy. Taking a few jerky bites, I started to gag. The stringy taffy got hung in my throat, and it wouldn’t come out. I had to duck behind the restroom building and dig out a wad of gross sugar goo.
When I emerged my eyes were blood red from choking, and my hands remained sticky the rest of the night.
The haunted house was a failure too. Have you ever heard of the “fight or flight” reaction when you are scared? Well, I was “fight” that night.
Mrs. Collins, my homeroom teacher, chased me through a dark hall. Filled with fright, I pushed her off of me and she fell down in the middle of the chase. I didn’t mean to, but it didn’t sit well with her.
I think it was the first time in Halloween history that the lights were turned on inside a haunted house so a child could be escorted out.
Feeling ashamed and a little sad, I made my way to the petting zoo. Just when I was about to walk in, that same kid with the hay allergy apparently has an allergy to goats too. I just turned around and left.
By the time my friend’s mom returned, I was ready to go home. I had been sneezed on. I almost choked to death. And I assaulted my teacher.
Yeah, it was time to go home.
The next day, all the kids in homeroom were going on and on about what a great time they had at the fall festival. I didn’t say a word.
Even when I flashed Mrs. Collins a smile, she just gave me a blank stare. The rest of the year, I was known as “you there.”
And as if my humiliation wasn’t enough, my friend’s little brother confronted me at lunch time.
He had a black tint around his forehead, and there were red scabs along his hairline.
His mother had scrubbed his head so much that it started to bleed trying to get his “widow’s peak” off. I didn’t realize I used a permanent marker.
No wonder my friend never returned my phone calls.