‘Twas many and many a year ago when I acquired a genuine witch’s hat. That Halloween I covered my face with clown-white and donned an old choir robe. I was trying to be the funniest witch imaginable.
Folks will look at me, I thought, and immediately get the joke. From house to house, everyone will admire the creativity and artistry of my costume. Before I could get out the door, though, there came a knock.
Ah yes, the younger children would be calling before dark. I opened the door, and there stood Bailey, the 3-year old from two doors down. And her mother. I put on my brightest smile and said, “Hi, Bailey!” She simultaneously burst into tears and leapt into her mom’s arms.
Oh no! I thought. This is not what I intended at all! Bailey was my friend, someone with whom I had shared fairy tales and snacks and laughter since the time she was born. And her mom was certainly someone I did not want to be angry with me.
“I didn’t mean to make her cry,” I pleaded plaintively.
“Oh, that’s OK,” her mom said. But I knew it wasn’t.
Things were never quite the same with Bailey and me. While it’s easy to attribute that to the fact that she and her parents moved from the neighborhood a year later, I couldn’t but believe that it had something to do with the night my witch’s getup brought tears to her eyes.
I find this dark memory pervading the atmosphere as the 2014 version of Halloween approaches. I insist on writing about something light, something humorous. I find myself in total writer’s block – a malady that, thankfully, visits me seldom.
In an effort to engage cathartic therapy, I type out the first few paragraphs above, confessing my trespass against the cute girl from down the street. Then I sit and stare at the computer screen. “Come on, muses! Speak up!” Nothing.
As fate would have it, I have Bailey’s email address. She’s living in Tennessee – Nashville, actually.
I send her a note of apology, referencing an event I’m not sure she’ll even recall:
“I still owe you for that time I made you cry on Halloween when you saw me with clown-white on my face and didn’t think it was funny at all!”
Bailey replies, almost immediately: “Haha love the bit about why you owe me!”
Which I read several times and, ultimately, interpret as meaning, “All is forgiven!” At last, now I can get on with this column. The deadline for which is upon me.
But the writer’s block persists. In what may be seen as the ultimate desperation move, I fire off a note to my kids: “I’m on deadline for a Halloween column. Can you help by calling up a funny memory or two?”
My daughter, who will be 35 in January, replies, “The only real memories I have of Halloween are of you dressing up like a witch.”
Did I mention my age at the time I made Bailey cry? I was 42.
I think I’ll go carve a pumpkin.
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Ark., where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at [email protected].