Joe Lawler
Managing Editor
THREE HALLOWEENS ago, while still a senior in high school, I was scheduled to attend the school Halloween dance that night, and had scored a date with a girl whom I had a hopeless, life-threatening crush on. I’m sure you know the kind of crush I mean – if this mademoiselle so much as glanced at me in the hallway, I would sink into a kind of peculiarly adolescent trance, wherein I would attempt to appear aloof by cursing at one of my friends, but somehow manage only to convey utter gawkiness and exhibit symptoms of a debilitating jungle sickness. The only force in my world more powerful than this timidity was the peer pressure exerted by my heartless friends, who had more or less forced me to ask this girl out – which action almost cost me a heart attack.
Unable, however, to plan out the big night clearly ahead of time, my friends (the 3nd, 4rd, and 5th wheels, respectively), my lady-friend, and I were faced with two hours to kill before the kickoff of the dance. Although we knew we were well past the age appropriate for trick-or –treating, we made the decision to go door to door in my neighborhood out of desperation. The only decisions I made in high school were desperate.
We knew that our salty New England neighbors would not hesitate to refuse costume-less teenagers and would perhaps even call the police on such miscreants, so I hastily scrawled a serial code on the front of my shirt and the words “cop killer – 30 years to life” on the back.
My companions scraped together similarly half-hearted costumes, except for the love of my 18-year-old life, who was already too dressed up to change before the dance. In fact, she demurred at first because of the likelihood of the steady drizzle ruining her elaborate hairdo, but our brashness overrode her reservations.
Once out on the street, I was eager to salvage my fast-fading rapport with her, so I made a show of revealing that I’d swiped a fourth of Seagram’s from my parents’ liquor cabinets. I quickly upped the ante by brazenly downing about a quarter of the bottle before passing it around the group. I felt on top of my game as we knocked on the door of the first house.
“Trick or Treat?” we mumbled at/ asked of the aged couple who responded. They reluctantly handed over five boxes of yoghurt raisins with sour expressions on their faces, and we decided immediately thereafter that asking for candy was far beneath our lofty stature. We approached the second house with the sole intention of tipping over the various statuary scattered over the lawn.
No sooner had I (with great virility, I thought) kicked over a small gnome than a squat man burst out of the house like a vengeful demon, equipped with a bat and fixin’ to wreak havoc on us. I quickly (and gallantly, I judged) grabbed the hand of my date and beat a hasty retreat towards the road, while our compatriots escaped through the backyard. The homeowner chased the three of them, thankfully, leaving me and my future spouse to make good our escape. We got halfway up the road before the dark and stormy conditions and our state of inebriation took their toll. Before I could react, we were hurtling headlong into a sizable ditch. I spun around in order to use my body to soften my lady fair’s fall, but alas, her arm became stuck beneath my and cracked audibly as we landed. Seconds later, the half-full bottle of Seagram’s landed on a nearby rock and showered us with its contents.
My date shrieked in abject pain. I encouraged her to stand up and allow me to pull us out of the six-inch high mud, but it became apparent that, with her broken arm pinned underneath my body, she could not move due to the excruciating pain.
So there we lay, trapped in a pitch-black Massachusetts roadway ditch with mud and runoff water almost covering us, smelling like we’d just stumbled out of a distillery. My hopes for a successful date were a distant memory. Now I was merely praying for someone to walk by and rescue us from our predicament. My so-called friends, needless to say, were nowhere to be found in my hour of need. The first person to walk by was a policeman. I made a snap decision not to alert him to our situation, considering my ill-advised costume.
It being Halloween, I was confident there would be no shortage of people walking along the road, so I stifled my date’s cries of pain, and let him walk by. To my horror, though, the next party to walk by was none other than my mother leading by the hands my little brother (a devil) and my sister (Princess Jasmine).
I won’t trouble you with a recount of that particular confrontation, but I will mention that I did not make it to the dance, and I was never allowed to go on a date again. Also, Halloween was forbidden for me (a type of punishment only my mother would attempt). That punishment was fine by me, though. That Halloween marked the very worst date for me or anyone else in my high school, as determined in an impromptu poll during study hall the next week. I never wanted a repeat performance. I thought then that I would never be party to such a drunken, foolish, ugly night out again.
Then I went to college.
Contact Joe at jlawler2@nd.edu.
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