Philip Hassey - Writer's Workshop - 10/26/00
Dan & Phil: Halloween
Research has shown that Little Timmy was the model for all the boys in the stories pastors tell at church. He was kind of shrimpy, didn't have any friends, was a bit dumb in the head, and perhaps even smelt a little. Of course he had the heart of a full fledged saint.
Unfortunately for Little Timmy, Dan and I, the sinister 4th grade boys we were, didn't like him. On all occasions available, we threw water balloons at him. Timmy being a saint dealt with this harsh treatment fairly well. Our mothers did not handle it so well, and frequently we suffered for our attempts at befriending Little Timmy with water balloons, red paint, snakes, or bb guns.
But really, Dan and I weren't always like this. Back in 2nd grade we were sweet and innocent too. The only sins we committed were entirely unintentional. Mostly we were just clumsy. Then in 3rd grade we were usually pretty nice guys too. Now at the point we had just reached in 4th grade, our mothers had made it very clear that we had to reform ourselves. They had started using language that implied imprisonment, death, and hell, though not necessarily in that order, if we continued our habitual torment of Little Timmy.
So when time came for Halloween, a season traditionally honoring the actions of children like Dan and I, we were stumped as to what we could do.
"We could just try to be friends with him," said Dan.
"The last time we tried that, even with purity in our hearts, we ended up forcing him to rob a hardware store, and tied him to that tree with the rope and hosed him down with cold April water until he turned green," I commented.
"Maybe we shouldn't try to be friends with him," said Dan, "Maybe we should try something else, that was kind of friendly with an edge of evil."
"Sure," I said. We sat in our lawn chairs and surveyed our territory, "Hey, we should make a haunted house for Halloween, and scare all our friends and stuff."
"We don't have any friends," noted Dan.
"We could scare fellow classmates and the like," I said.
"Hey," said Dan, "We could let Little Timmy be a monster in it! He could be the undead mummified spike and blood encrusted monster."
"It would be pretty fun to dress him up like that."
"And we wouldn't even have to beat him up ourselves," said Dan, "Everyone else would do it for us, when he'd act all wimpy."
"Yeah," I said.
The Sunday before Halloween, Dan and I dutifully filed into Mrs. Harper's classroom. We sat down, and Mrs. Harper stood up. She walked around the room and handed to each of us a single piece of candy.
"You're all to listen," said Mrs. Harper, "Now that I've given you a piece of candy, I'm going to tell you about a little boy named Roger."
I whispered to Dan about how even though Mrs. Harper was not the dumbest of our teachers, she wasn't too bright as to the order candy and stories should be told.
"Now Listen," said Mrs. Harper, "Roger was a happy boy, even though he wasn't the smartest in his class. Even though he came to school in dirty clothes, and really didn't have any friends. Usually he stumbled to school because he had a hard time walking straight because he was cross-eyed.
"On Halloween one year, he went Trick-o-Treating. He was Casper the Friendly Ghost, and he got a lot of candy, though it was mostly out of pity, because his Ghost costume was obviously a single garbage bag with a few holes in it.
"But Roger was different from everyone else. Instead of going home with his candy and eating it, he took a big handful of newspapers, and cut them up, and pasted them into little bags. He filled each and every one of those twenty five bags with candies he had got while trooping around.
"At school the next day he took them in and gave one to everyone in his class. Nobody thanked little Roger for the candies, because they all thought he was dumb. But Roger didn't mind at all, he went home happy, because he had done a generous deed."
Dan and I snickered about if we had seen this kid coming to school with all his Halloween candy we would have beaten him up and taken it from him.
After the story, Mrs. Harper gave a long speech about sharing, and how Halloween isn't about getting candy, it is about sharing it. Dan and I not only were not convicted by her sermon, we found it to be rather offensive to our own belief systems.
"She's violating truth!" cried Dan. I agreed.
Tuesday was Halloween. Dan and I spent all afternoon preparing our haunted house and told everyone to come. We also spent some extra long time making a scary outfit for Little Timmy, because we knew he would just come out as Casper if we didn't.
We invited Timmy over so we could go Trick-o-Treating with him, and explained to him how he was going to get to be a monster. He agreed, and wore the monster outfit we made, after he took off his Casper outfit.
"Am I a scary monster now?" asked Timmy. Dan and I stepped back, with horns protruding from every square inch of his body, and ketchup dripping from most of them, he was a pretty frightening figure.
"Yeah," said Dan, "Let's here your monster noise, so you can do that later in the haunted house."
Me and Dan were just about knocked over by the roar he gave. Dan and I had a new respect for Little Timmy.
"Okay," I said, "That's great. Let's go."
So we went Trick-o-Treating. When we got back we put Timmy into his position as the deadly horned monster, and hid our candies with him, because we knew he wouldn't steal any.
Most of the kids who came to our haunted house, left screaming. We could hear Little Timmy in there roaring at each and everyone of them. We were pretty darned happy with that kid. He was making our haunted house a full fledged success.
Of course, what we didn't realize was that Little Timmy was doing more than just scaring the kids. Most of them walked to his corner, and he roared at them, and then he offered them a piece of candy.
Fortunately for Little Timmy we didn't not notice the candy loss issue until much later, after all the kids and Timmy were gone. And although the next day at school, the kids all thanked us for the great candies, we were not happy about it. Come snowfall, Little Timmy was going to regret his sainthood.
