A True Halloween Story
As a child I was prone to colds, chills, and coughing fits that must have worried my parents. One year, the year I was in Grade 1, I caught a cold right before Halloween. My parents didn’t prevent me from trick-or-treating – that would have been too cruel – but they did take me out unusually early in the day on the 31st, I guess on the thinking that the temperature was dropping and getting more perilous by the hour.
Which meant that I was already back home and changed out of my costume by the time most other kids thronged the streets. While trick-or-treaters rang our doorbell and held their bags open, I was in my pyjamas, taking inventory of my own loot. And at some point in the evening, one of my own classmates turned up at our door. His name was Brian; he and I waved at each other as my mother gave him a miniature chocolate bar, or perhaps a couple of those little red boxes of raisins.
I didn’t think anything of it. But at school the next day, as all the first-graders gathered attentively around our teacher, Mrs. Scott, Brian put up his hand and made an announcement: “Derek didn’t get to go out for Halloween!”
I began to raise my hand to correct this misunderstanding, but Mrs. Scott spoke first. “Oh, that’s terrible,” she said. “Well, maybe everyone in the class can bring in a little something for Derek.”
Well, what can I say? Yes, greed claimed my six-year-old soul in an instant, staying my hand and stilling my tongue.
And my base instincts were well rewarded. Over the next few days, everyone in the class did indeed bring in a little something for Derek. Each morning more kids would hand over chocolate bars or packets of cookies, which I would accept with murmured thanks, my eyes cast downward, my face mottled by shame and sugar-lust.
But there was a flaw in the plan. I’d soon amassed a plastic bag full of ill-gotten treats, but there was no way to get it back home to my lair without exposing the fraud to my parents. My budding criminal mind was quickly stymied – the only solution I could see was to leave the entire stash at school and try to eat it there over time. So for a week or two I was a desperate, sweets-addled gorger, stuffing a couple of snack cakes into my mouth every lunch hour at school. And all of this under intensifying pressure.
Mrs. Scott: “Derek, you should take those things home instead of cluttering up your desk here!”
Me: (stuffing mouth with snack cakes) “Yeshmishshcott!”
The end finally came after a parent-teacher night. I had done nothing as the fateful summit loomed; I’d like to think my inaction was stoic in nature, that I’d accepted exposure and punishment as my due, but it seems more likely that I was simply out of ideas, a dumb deer caught in the headlights of justice. Or maybe I didn’t even know about parent-teacher night, was still anxiously muddling along and gobbling mouthfuls of lunch-hour chocolate in hopes of consuming the evidence.
In any case, that night my parents returned from the school demanding an explanation, my father clutching my half-full plastic bag of candy. I’m happy to say I have no real memory of whatever punishment followed, nor of what must have surely followed that in turn: public exposure in Mrs. Scott’s class, peer outrage, social ostracization.
All of it richly deserved, of course.
Which meant that I was already back home and changed out of my costume by the time most other kids thronged the streets. While trick-or-treaters rang our doorbell and held their bags open, I was in my pyjamas, taking inventory of my own loot. And at some point in the evening, one of my own classmates turned up at our door. His name was Brian; he and I waved at each other as my mother gave him a miniature chocolate bar, or perhaps a couple of those little red boxes of raisins.
I didn’t think anything of it. But at school the next day, as all the first-graders gathered attentively around our teacher, Mrs. Scott, Brian put up his hand and made an announcement: “Derek didn’t get to go out for Halloween!”
I began to raise my hand to correct this misunderstanding, but Mrs. Scott spoke first. “Oh, that’s terrible,” she said. “Well, maybe everyone in the class can bring in a little something for Derek.”
Well, what can I say? Yes, greed claimed my six-year-old soul in an instant, staying my hand and stilling my tongue.
And my base instincts were well rewarded. Over the next few days, everyone in the class did indeed bring in a little something for Derek. Each morning more kids would hand over chocolate bars or packets of cookies, which I would accept with murmured thanks, my eyes cast downward, my face mottled by shame and sugar-lust.
But there was a flaw in the plan. I’d soon amassed a plastic bag full of ill-gotten treats, but there was no way to get it back home to my lair without exposing the fraud to my parents. My budding criminal mind was quickly stymied – the only solution I could see was to leave the entire stash at school and try to eat it there over time. So for a week or two I was a desperate, sweets-addled gorger, stuffing a couple of snack cakes into my mouth every lunch hour at school. And all of this under intensifying pressure.
Mrs. Scott: “Derek, you should take those things home instead of cluttering up your desk here!”
Me: (stuffing mouth with snack cakes) “Yeshmishshcott!”
The end finally came after a parent-teacher night. I had done nothing as the fateful summit loomed; I’d like to think my inaction was stoic in nature, that I’d accepted exposure and punishment as my due, but it seems more likely that I was simply out of ideas, a dumb deer caught in the headlights of justice. Or maybe I didn’t even know about parent-teacher night, was still anxiously muddling along and gobbling mouthfuls of lunch-hour chocolate in hopes of consuming the evidence.
In any case, that night my parents returned from the school demanding an explanation, my father clutching my half-full plastic bag of candy. I’m happy to say I have no real memory of whatever punishment followed, nor of what must have surely followed that in turn: public exposure in Mrs. Scott’s class, peer outrage, social ostracization.
All of it richly deserved, of course.
posted by DW | 1.11.06
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