Halloween is coming and it's my favorite holiday. I can't resist looking at all the decorations in the stores. I shamelessly try on the masks and push all the buttons to make skeletons scream. I laugh out loud and feel like a kid again. And there's always the candy. Giving someone a treat and expecting nothing in return. I love Halloween.I don't love haunted housed though. I remember once my Mom dropped us kids off at the local haunted house. It was an old, country house out in the middle of nowhere. The line was really long, filled with older high school kids. Mom didn't like to stand much. She gave us some money to get in and then went home.
I was terrified. How could Mom abandon me at this place? Why did I decide to come? I hate being scared. I decided to jump out of line, get some hot cocoa and not make it back in line before it was time to go. Convenient huh? My sister went inside with her friend. I could hear screams from the house and at one point I thought I heard my sister's scream. I remember thinking how brave she was to go in there. This clearly wasn't my thing.
I found that I was better suited to being on "the other side of the curtain." When we were in seventh or eighth grade, the nuns allowed us upperclassmen to convert one of the locker rooms into a haunted house for the first and second graders. We had a ball. We set up folding tables for them to crawl through. And we used sheets to make tunnels. We had food for kids to feel - like jello with grapes in it and told them that it was eyeballs in brains. We dressed up as goblins, witches, and ghosts. We scared those little kids and some of them even cried. I still can't believe the nuns allowed us to do it.
Savor the details of this season and tune into the kid inside.
