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| LtoR: Me, adopted dad Harley, adopted sister Emelia at a costume party, probably at church. Possibly Halloween, possibly something else. I have no idea, but I made an awesome hobo and I think we can all agree that I have thing for black eyes, since I've been drawing them on since childhood. My current black eye is turning sickly yellow, so that is positive. |
As a child, I worked very hard to hide my anxieties and fears. I protected my older brother from bullies at school and I was proud of my neighborhood reputation as a kid not to mess with. Growing up in a free-for-all style foster home, I coped with the stress in my life by sucking my thumb at night and by seeking constant reassurance by teachers at school that I was doing a good job. I also avoided scary movies, which wasn't hard to do because our foster parents never took us to the theater and VCR's hadn't been invented yet, so really that just meant whenever intense movies came on our black and white tv, I read books in the unfinished attic instead of torturing myself with spine-tingling entertainment. It was nothing.
After Rex and I were adopted when he was 9 and I was 7 years old, my carefully crafted veneer of toughness cracked wide open in one horrific incident that ended up changing the way my school celebrated the most anticipated, most popular holiday of the year. Yes, I am the one. I am the kid who destroyed the school's Halloween party. And not just for one year. My behavior was so alarming, so completely over the top, I managed to smash all memories of the good old days of Halloween fun, replacing them with subdued whispers about how there would never be a proper school party ever again.
In third grade, less than 4 months after my life was turned upside down with an unexpected adoption into a family of total strangers, my new school held it's annual Halloween Carnival. It was the biggest event of the school year because it was not only a party for students and their families, it was also the school's biggest fund-raiser. People bought tickets at the door to play games like Ring Toss, Cake Walk, and Pop the Balloon. (This was during the Wild West period of childhood, years before anyone questioned the safety of kids throwing metal-tipped darts at a board full of small balloons and when it was not considered bad form for minors to walk themselves to school or to spend all day outside roaming the neighborhood, either.) The consistently hottest event at the Fairfield Elementary School Halloween Carnival was the Haunted House. The school staff and PTA pulled out all the stops to make the Haunted House a spectacular experience for all community members. Grandmas and Grandpas lined up with their 1st grade grandchildren to walk through the fun of being startled by the unexpected. When I say Haunted House, I don't mean the kind of blood tripping, chainsaw chasing gore that grown adults now pay ridiculous amounts of money to walk through. I mean a gentle, no monsters, school library classic-book-themed walk through the decorated, darkened rooms adjacent to the stage in the school gymnasium.
I had never been through a Haunted House, so I had no idea what to expect. No one told me anything about it other than it was the Best Thing EVER, so of course I had to do it. I was a tough kid after all, and nothing scared me.
As I entered the dark foyer with a group of other people, we paused to wait until everyone got in the room and the door was shut behind us. My eyes adjusted to the blackness, which was broken only by the eerie greenish glow of a neon exit sign above a door I hadn't noticed before. I danced lightly on the balls of my feet, nervous about what was coming next. The first thing that happened was a cackling voice over a speaker saying, "Welcome my pretties to the Wizard of Oz," followed by an evil laugh straight from the Wicked Witch of the West. Seconds later, the Wicked Witch herself stepped out from a nearby black curtain. She had the green face, crooked nose, pointy witch hat and green hands holding a flashlight shining upwards, illuminating the ugly warts on her nose.
And that is when I completely lost it. I don't remember anything other than being dragged out the door underneath the green exit sign and finding myself outside behind the school lunchroom, surrounded by teachers in costumes from the beloved book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I was still screaming bloody murder when I came to my senses. The Wicked Witch was kneeling in front of me, ripping off her scary green hook nose, wig of long gray hair, telling me it was ok, it wasn't really real. It didn't matter at that point what was real or not real. I stopped screaming and deescalated to sobbing and shaking like I was having a seizure. Adults streamed in and out of the building, asking what happened and what they should do next.
I am sure they asked me why I freaked out, screaming in blood-curdling horror at the witch, and why I frantically clawed my way to freedom, pushing and shoving everyone in my path in a desperate attempt to flee. My reaction to being startled by the witch set off a chain reaction of screaming by all the other children in the same dark room as me, and we were all hysterical by the time I was removed out the back door.
I didn't have an answer for what happened to me beyond hiccuping tears that the witch was scary. I wasn't able to explain that many so-called family friendly movies terrified me. The Wizard of Oz was a special kind of horror because it featured a host of characters that were in my mind equal to Freddy Kruger in Nightmare on Elm Street. It had not only the wicked witch, but also flying monkeys, a suspicious tin man, a mean Mr. Oz and I thought Dorthy's aunt was kinda grumpy, too. Of course, I didn't see all those characters at the Halloween Haunted House. I didn't get that far. The Wicked Witch was enough for me.
When I was escorted back inside the gym, the party was over. My screaming inside the haunted house was so loud it invaded the rest of the carnival and all the children started crying. I killed the whole thing. The grown ups were talking quietly, removing crepe paper streamers from the ceiling as my adopted siblings and I were escorted through the gym to the office to call our parents to come and pick us up.
The next year, the school had the annual Halloween carnival, but without a book-themed haunted house. Attendance was way down and for the first time in the history of the school, fund-raisers selling candles and Christmas wrap had to be instituted to replace the missing Halloween money. Everyone still remembered quite clearly what had happened the previous year and I still had no answer to their unspoken question, "What the hell is your problem with The Wizard of Oz?' I didn't know then and I still don't know now. All I can tell you is that thanks to the wonder of video clips, I can show you exactly the parts of famous children's movies still alarm some part of my inner soul (and I will never understand why all these movies are shown on tv between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There isn't one redeeming holiday message in any of them. America's sentimentality is weird.)
1. The Child-Catcher in Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. I don't know what treacle tarts are, but I don't want any, thank you very much.
2. The tunnel scene in Charlie and Chocolate Factory. Watch for the giant earthworm across the face and a chicken's head as it chopped off. (!!!)
3. We've fully covered this topic, so no need for more words. Just proceed with the evidence of terror, please: The Wizard of Oz
Flying monkeys,
Melting Wicked Witch of the West,
and Auntie Em (now that I'm a mother, I am willing to cut Auntie Em some slack. She was obviously exhausted and her sniping is completely understandable. Besides, she didn't even use a curse word. She is fine.)
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