A Halloween of Adolescence

Hello & Wishing you as happy a Halloween as you can muster during these profoundly and increasingly nightmarish times.

​Still, for your entertainment I wanted to share this creative essay I wrote a few years ago for Jill Howe’s Story Sessions about being 12.
The Heebie Jeebies
I’ll tell you a balloon is a beautiful thing. Even the spelling: One “b” and then an “a,” followed by two “l’s and two “o’s so a double consonant and a double vowel and finally an n to seal the deal....

I mean, how common is a spelling like that? Not very. And purple balloons? Wow. Because, if before the invention of the internet, you could find enough of them, and you were me, and twelve years old, then the plan was to be grapes for Halloween. Well, I did get enough of them and inflated all of them with the power of my lungs unlike Michelle Mueller who could probably never blow up that many because she hyperventilated every day until she passed out in front of a group of other 7th grade onlookers who cheered her on by the side door during PE when Mr Adams wasn’t looking. The whole thing was a travesty. Anyway, I was excited for our night. Me and my friends Jennifer and Gwen were in Jennifer’s room and they were sitting on the bed. I was standing up because I didn’t want to accidentally risk popping my grapes. Jennifer was dressed as Madonna and Gwen was in a bride costume, so, unlike me, they could sit down easily.We’d been talking about head lice and a boy at school who always had them. He would collect them from his own head and would race them. I kid you not. Instead of a flea circus he had a lice track team.I was getting antsy to begin trick or treating but they didn’t seem ready at all.I noticed a photo on top of Jennifer’s dresser of her in a hospital bed when she was smaller.
You were in the hospital,” I asked.
Yes, I had to have an operation.”
Whoa,” I said,
Yeah, I had a cyst and they took it out. It was in my stomach. It was as big as a tennis ball. The doctor even saved it to show to his colleagues.”
His colleagues?” Wow.
Yeah, I had a rare thing called a teratoma. And guess what else?
What?
When they took it out, they found hair and teeth in it.
Eww.
The doctor said it may have been my twin, a twin that never grew up.It was dead.
So like you were pregnant with a baby when your mom was pregnant with you!
This was like a horrifying nightmare Russian matryoshka doll in real life situation.
Oh my God!
How did you know you had it? Gwen asked.
I could see it like poking out and feel it.
Then Gwen said, So before you got here, me and Jennifer were talking about the party.
What party?
Doug’s.
We hadn’t been invited to the party because we weren’t cool enough. Rumor had it that there was going to be a haunted house in Doug Elkin’s creepy, unfinished basement with a dirt floor. There were going to be blindfolds and stuff in bowls like spaghetti and jello, but the boys running it would say, You are about to touch guts. You are about to touch maggots…ooooooo, ahhhhhhhh. Their idea was that we’d only trick or treat for a little while and then kind of hang around outside Doug’s hoping we’d be invited in. Also, there were rumors that the boys would hold your hand if you got scared. You should probably take your costume off if you’re going to go with us Barrie, cause like, it’s… too much.
Are you kidding me? What?
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Trick or treat for a little while? I had a pillow case that was empty and ready for candy. I was ready for candy trading too. I wanted to get as many Reese’s peanut butter cups as possible, the mini ones and the regular. I’d decided that I would even trade nerds, even grape nerds if I could have another Reese’s and this surprised me. I wanted to go to so many houses so as to increase the chances that some cool adult, probably without kids of her own, would give us candy cigarettes. And if this unlikely, yet amazing thing happened, I would pretend they were Kool brand cigarettes because Kool cigarettes were so cool they even had a different spelling of the word cool .They spelled it with a K. Coool!
So, this is how it went. Friendships turning on a dime. My cousin had told me about this. She’d said, Yep, You get a little cardboard valentine with Sylvester the cat on it or Ziggy from Comic Strip or Strawberry Shortcake from the same person since you were both were 5 and then boom, you hit twelve and suddenly no valentine. It’s bullshit. It’s horrifying.
She was right. I could feel them pulling away from me, especially Gwen who’d been my friend first. I mean she was a bride for Halloween and she was pretty. Anyone could see that she was. Of course she wanted to be with Jennifer who was Madonna. Madonna and a Bride went together way better than grapes did. All you could do with grapes was eat them or smash them into juice or wine. I didn’t blame her. I looked at the grapes of me in a new not good way.
I probably would have stayed home if I’d known it was going to go down like this. Home on Halloween wasn’t not fun. My Dad was into it like other people’s dads were into Christmas. We didn’t have Christmas because we were Jewish, but Halloween more than made up for it. I mean we had gravestones, an old waterbed mattress blown up with air that my Mom had painted like a monster, spooky sounds echoing out from hidden speakers, and my Dad dressed like a gorilla jumping of a trap door hidden in our front lawn for flood control while my sisters and I took turns comforting the children it was too much for. No surprise that two out of the three of us turned out to be therapists…
I didn’t want to go to a creepy house with gross boys and feel cold spaghetti and jello while I was blindfolded. These textures did not have my name written all over them, not to mention Doug was an asshole who tripped me more than once in social studies class when I’d been walking to my desk.
Why was this happening?
Why was anything, anything?
Why did Jennifer’s parents sleep in two skinny separate twin beds, beds that were more like cots really, like the beds in some kind orphanage play?
Also, Why didn’t they have any books?
And why did Jennifer get the main bedroom with her own bathroom. Was that even supposed to be for kids?
Why did her 16 year old brother have a pet snake, a pet rat, and a pet tarantula? What a revolting little zoo.
Why did I have lopsided breasts, each one growing at a different rate?
Why was their hair in places that didn’t even ask permission to grow there, it just showed up, even on peoples faces, even if you were a girl and then your mom would give you this nasty bleach stuff that stunk?
And soon there were going to be periods too with tampons that expanded inside you with a gross weird string hanging off of it like a window shade, like a pull cord on a lawnmower .Jesus Christ! Almost every day of childhood was turning into its own goddamn Halloween
I said, Nah, you two go, Tell me how it is.
But we can go trick or treating first.
Okay. I said.
We went to five houses, five! No Reese’s. One snickers, one laugh taffy, one tootsie roll, and some peanuts from a dentist.
A few weeks ago, I told my partner about that Halloween, especially the part about the teratoma and he said, Oh yeah, I’ve heard of those. There is a horror movie about one, about a teratoma? It’s called Basket Case.
Why?
Because the teratoma cyst monster thing is alive and lives in a basket.
Eww.
There are 2 sequels too
Basket Case 2 and 3?
Yep. Then he said, You should watch scenes from them on youtube, especially some of the kill scenes.
I won’t be doing that. You know, I said, That may have been my last trick or treating Halloween as a kid and we hardly went to any houses at all. They just wanted to get to that stupid haunted house.
Alone and without much candy, I was left to my young peanut butter cups romantic fantasies based on the TV commercials. I was certain that that is what it would be like when I fell in love: I’d just be minding my own business eating some peanut butter on a grassy hill because you know that’s normal and boom, some really cute boy like Ralph Macchio from the karate kid would be bicycling by holding onto the handlebars with one hand, eating chocolate with the other and he’d almost run into me. But would I get hurt ? No, magically, astoundingly no. Instead, his chocolate would land in my peanut butter and then,Eureka we’d both discover or in our case rediscover that the combination of the peanut butter and chocolate was amazing and that the two of us, well, we were amazing together too, because: Two great tastes that taste great together. Reese’s peanut butter cups.That’s what love would be like. If I was as sure of anything at all, I was sure of this.
Also, it wouldn’t be anything at all like this shitty night. Then I saw Eddie Astor across the street. What a jerk. He had on a fake beard and mustache, but I could still tell it was him.
He crossed the street. What are you supposed to be, a bunch of purple balloons cause that’s not even a costume,
I’m grapes Eddie, grapes!
Where are your cute friends he asked?
I don’t know who you’re talking about I said,
Oh, I think you do, he said. What’s wrong, do you have cooties?
Fuck you, Eddie.
I could tell he was surprised I said the F word because he was Catholic and Catholics got in trouble even for saying things like God dammit.
What if I took a pin and popped your balloons, excuse me, your grapes? he said:
Whatever, Eddie, you don’t even have a pin. I’m going home.
I didn’t feel like going trick or treating anymore. It was late and dark and I felt stupid.
I hadn’t heard the word cooties for a long time and I remembered the cooties game I played when I was little. Those Cooties had smooth nice plastic bodies which resembled beehives -Each cootie would be assembled just like in Mr potato head but in cooties the game everyone could have their own cootie, Also, Mr potato head’s feet were just shoes. He had no legs, just a too small hat and shoes. He was full of holes and lumpy. He was the kind of potato who’d never graduate to becoming French fries. I’d played Cooties and Mr. Potato Head with my old next door neighbor Cara Kertowski on the floor of her living room in front of the couch when we’d lived in Florida. And if you think about it, children playing with plastic bugs and potatoes with faces is pretty creepy but what was extra creepy was that Cara s Dad was a mean drunk. Cara’s mom eventually got divorced from him and my parents kept in touch with them. Jeffery, Carla’s brother, became a doctor in the marines. Makes sense. Make sure no one can mess with you and make sure you can fix people who are hurt. Interesting how life carves us out when we believe we are making choices that are all our own. Yep, carves us out like turkeys.
To keep myself company on the walk home I sang there’s a hole in the bucket from sleepover camp: There’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza dear Liza there’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza a hole, Then fix it dear Henry dear Henry dear Henry then fix it dear Henry. With what shall a fix it dear Liza dear Liza ,with what shall I fix it dear Liza with what?
Meanwhile my Dad was probably finishing up his last jump out of the hole in our front yard.
…with straw dear Henry dear Henry with straw…
What a horrifying song! Classic relationship with a narcissist. Calling her dear Liza but expecting her to come up with all the ideas to fix the bucket, but then complaining about every single one.
Get it together dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry.
You’re an idiot dear Henry
Get a different partner dear Liza dear Liza dear Liza or at least a better bucket. Just do something!
But who knew? Maybe she was the idiot? Maybe she was even the real old lady who swallowed a fly and all those other animals too? The fly, the horse of course. the spider that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. They really could be the same person. What did I know? I was 12