Raggedy Andy’s Revenge

When I was a little kid, Halloween was one of the most important holidays of the year. Along with Thanksgiving, Easter and a few others, it perennially fought for third place on the holiday charts. Nothing was going to unseat Christmas as the number one holiday and my birthday always came in a distant but strong second. But after those two, it was a holiday free-for-all to see who would earn the bronze medal.

For me, Halloween usually rated above Valentine’s Day and New Years for a number of reasons. It was a special day that was celebrated at night with witches and goblins going door-to-door begging for treats. Refuse their requests for candy and face the consequences! Maybe you got a little soap on your windows, maybe a little toilet paper on your tree branches. Halloween’s basic elements of anarchy, extortion and mayhem appealed to my sense of world order even at an early age.

When I was in kindergarten I was sick with tonsillitis the entire week prior to Halloween. Fortunately, I was able to rally health-wise and make it back to Lincoln Elementary School for the momentous day. Unfortunately, because I had missed the entire week before Halloween, I didn’t know that all the kindergartners were supposed to bring their costumes to school with them for a special event that day.

I began to suspect that something was up when I boarded the bus that morning. “Hey, what’s that little Superman doing on bus number eleven? Isn’t that miniature versions of Rocky and Bullwinkle sitting across from Underdog?”

When I arrived at school and found out that all the kindergartners were to take part in a Halloween parade for the entire school I was devastated. My mom, like many stay at home moms in those days, was staying at home without a car so there was no possible way to get my costume to school in time for the parade.

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Richardson, was an elderly lady who had managed to do exactly one cool thing in her life. The Batmobile had toured the country earlier that year and by having someone photograph herself next to it, she was able to connect with her young pupils on this solitary yet important level. I can still see that photo of a slim, gray-haired Mrs. Richardson standing next to the Batmobile in front of a new shopping center in suburban Boston. I imagined Batman and Robin standing just off camera, waiting impatiently for Mrs. Richardson’s photographer friend to snap the darned picture so they could resume their crime-fighting ways.

On this particular Halloween Mrs. Richardson decided it was her turn to be a superhero and protect me from the humiliation of having to either sit out of the costume parade or march in my civilian clothes. She gathered up various arts and crafts materials including Elmer’s glue, colored construction paper, paint, scissors and a grocery sack and before you knew it she had made me a costume to wear.

It was hideous. It was basically a big paper bag to wear on my head with holes cut out for my eyes and long strips of red construction paper streaming from the top for hair. It even had red construction paper eyelashes and two red painted circles for my cheeks. In retrospect, I think Mrs. Richardson was aiming for a Raggedy Andy costume. At least she got the raggedy part right.

When the time came for the costume parade I tried to feign a relapse of tonsillitis. No such luck. With my head stuck in a paper sack costume, no one could see me scratching my throat or hear my fake little coughs.

Before I knew it we were marching down the hall and through the other classrooms of Lincoln Elementary. The eyeholes of my makeshift costume bounced with every step and I knew for certain that my destiny was to plummet down a stairway or accidentally bump into some of the rougher second graders. I remember that during the few times I was able to see out of the eyeholes of my costume, I saw older kids laughing and pointing at me…the echoes of their scornful laughter reverberating off the elementary school walls.

It’s a vision that still comes to me in the middle of the night, causing me to wake up in a cold sweat with the musty smell of brown paper bag in my nostrils and the high-pitched laughter of eight-year-olds ringing in my ears.

Because I knew that Mrs. Richardson was proud of the costume she had made for me, I took it with me when I left school that afternoon. But I didn’t wear it trick-or-treating that night. Instead, I wore the store bought Bugs Bunny costume that my dad had picked up for me a few nights before. I knew it wasn’t as cool as a Batman costume or as scary as a Frankenstein mask with grayish green bolts coming out of the neck. But it was heck of a lot better than Mrs. Richardson’s paper bag Raggedy Andy costume.

Trick-or-treat, y’all. Happy Halloween.