Last week my wife and I volunteered to help out at our son’s middle school Halloween dance. We had the option to be chaperones or help be part of the “haunted happenings.” I, a theater kid at heart, jumped at the chance to be part of the show, so we volunteered to be scare actors in the Slightly Spooky Hallway.
It was an educational experience.
First of all, our costumes for the night were not scary at all. We were, as a family, all dressed a mimes. Not “killer” mimes with blood splattered on our costumes and insane serial killer makeup, but traditional mimes. Not exactly the scariest of ideas, but it’s what we decided on before we volunteered.
Second of all, the idea was for the hallway to be only moderately spooky, since the dance was solely for fifth graders. The middle school employed the services of the high school’s track team alongside us, the only two parents who volunteered for this, and once a group of unsupervised high school boys were given scary masks there was little to stop them from screaming at the kids at the top of their lungs.
Third, and most educational of all, was our experiencing the various types of fifth graders that engage with Halloween. There were the kids who genuinely scared easily and care had to be taken with them (which the high schoolers were, to their credit, considerate of); there were the kids who weren’t innately frightened but wanted to be scared at a Halloween celebration, which were my favorite; and then there were the kids who were “too cool” to be scared and were actively and vocally unimpressed with anything we tried to do, which were my least favorite.
But overall I had fun. I got to ham it up as a mime in a haunted hallway, which confused some of the kids and amused others. I got to indulge my inner theater kid, which I don’t get many chances to do nowadays. And I got to spend some time among my son’s old and new peers, even if they were running past me in a dark hallway.