The Witches That (Almost) Stole Halloween Happiness//October 157th, 2021

 The last week or so has been rough for me, and my mind has been wandering a lot. I find sometimes when you’re going through things, it helps to think back to times of previous triumph, so today I’d like to share this odd, but weirdly inspiring, story from when I was ten.

When I was a kid, I was extremely shy. I really didn’t have much to do with the other kids in my class. However, I made good grades, probably the best in my class at one point in time, so naturally, kids wanted to team up with me on projects. I also think some were just intrigued by my quiet, mysterious, somewhat spooky way. So, although I didn’t really have friends, per se, I had what would probably be described today as frenemies.

Two such girls were a pair of BFFs named Tara and Amanda. Amanda was someone I had known since kindergarten. She usually tended to drift more toward the “friend” side, until she met Tara, a girl who moved to our school district in fourth grade and had clearly modeled her entire personality after one of those Queen Bee types you see in movies. Tara and Amanda bonded quickly, and that was pretty much the end of Amanda’s interest in me, except on those rare occasions when Tara suddenly deemed it okay to talk to me again.

One of these occasions came early on in fifth grade. Tara, Amanda, and I were all in the same class once again (a curse I would endure until elementary school ended) and suddenly, probably in order to be like the characters in one of her favorite movies, Clueless, Tara came up with the idea that she, Amanda, and a couple of the other, more popular girls, should give me a makeover. Suddenly I was a hot topic in the classroom and even on the playground with other girls in my grade, some of whom I didn’t even know. Everyone wanted to get a look at the girl who was about to become the Tai Frasier to Tara’s Cher Horowitz. Suddenly I was part of the clique.

Despite the fact that it took the idea of a makeover to make it happen and I probably should’ve been insulted, I was so happy to finally have achieved elementary school popularity after spending so long as an outsider, that I was probably a little too eager. At some point during one of these makeover plotting sessions, it started being discussed what we would do for Halloween, and I was so excited to share my costume with these girls who I thought were my new best friends.

That year, my Aunt Trish had taken me on a birthday shopping spree just before school started, and at some point on the trip, we wound up at a Disney Store that already had costumes for sale. For reasons that are still unclear to me, as she isn’t and never has been anything close to my favorite Disney Princess, I fell in love with a gorgeous and overpriced Cinderella costume, and was overjoyed when my aunt offered to buy it for me. I was always super envious of the girls who had really expensive or extravagant costumes...Not that Halloween was about how much money was spent or anything like that, but I think I looked at these girls who were dressed to the nines and thought, But Halloween is MY holiday! Why shouldn’t I look the best?! (I was especially envious of the girls who got to wear a costume that was called “Pretty Witch”. I coveted it for years but never got to wear it. I believe it retailed for around $50 at the time, which was a lot for a kids’ costume. I haven’t been able to find a picture of it online anywhere in adulthood.) I suppose, if you think about it, Halloween has always sort of been my Cinderella story. Everything turns magical for that one period of time, then the clock strikes midnight, and everything goes back to an unfulfilling normal. (Though I would have no issue with things turning into pumpkins!) In hindsight, it almost seems like some sort of subconscious metaphor.

But yes, I got my Cinderella costume, and almost all the accoutrements, including a crown and of course the obligatory glass slippers (which I don’t think I wound up wearing on Halloween night, for some reason.) but skipped the wand because I deemed it too difficult to carry in addition to my beloved Casper treat pail. I was ecstatic, thinking I was about to be the belle of the ball; a true princess of Halloween.

Cut back to that day on the playground, when Tara and Amanda were working out Halloween plans. I was reluctant to even entertain the idea of going trick-or-treating with them, because, as much as I desperately wanted friends, going with Aunt Trish was what I looked forward to all year round. I couldn’t imagine a year of my childhood without that tradition. I started trying to come up with ways to work around it, finally settling on meeting up with Tara and Amanda and whoever else immediately after school, and still trying to find the time to see my aunt later on. But then they started on costume suggestions, and I wasn’t about to let that beautiful costume go unworn. Besides, I was sure they would think it was awesome that I’d gotten such a pretty, expensive dress, so I eagerly told them that I already had a costume and was going to be Cinderella.

That day, they didn’t really have much of a reaction, If I recall correctly, they even started talking about ways they could help me do my hair for the costume. But a few days later, all hell broke loose, and for the first time ever, my Halloween spirit was threatened.

I somehow found out that Tara had started inviting more and more people to be a part of the makeover, and was expecting it to happen at my house. Getting my father to agree to two girls would be difficult enough, let alone almost every girl in the fifth grade! And what really freaked me out was, I truly didn’t know some of the people who were suddenly being invited! The details of what happened after that are fuzzy now, but I remember going into somewhat of a panic, saying I didn’t want all these other girls that I didn’t even know there, that my parents wouldn’t agree to it, etc. I had hoped it would be like one of those sitcom moments, where the girl finds out just how true her friends are because they don’t judge her after she makes a decision that goes against them, but the reaction I got was the exact opposite.

Toward the end of that school day, Amanda had leaned very snidely over my desk while loudly talking to a girl who sat behind me, Amy, about giving her a makeover. (I don’t think Amy’s makeover ever actually came to fruition; she remained possibly the plainest girl in class through high school, but she did become some sort of minion to Tara and Amanda’s gang, despite the fact that she was probably frumpier than I was.) I went home and cried while my mother tried to make it all better by telling me they were never my friends in the first place if they only briefly accepted me so that they could change me. That wasn’t much of a comfort to a ten-year-old outcast who’d just had popularity dangled in front of her and taken away, but it was better than what happened when I went back to school after that weekend.

Casting me out from their group, and immediately replacing me, wasn’t enough for Tara and Amanda. They had to find some way to humiliate me, the girl who said no to them (although I don’t think I ever actually tried to back out of the makeover, I just wanted to do it slightly more on my own terms) and somehow they decided the way to do this, was to get everyone talking about my Cinderella costume.

Somehow I’d missed the memo (though let’s be honest, I’d probably have discarded it anyway) that it was no longer “cool” to dress up like a princess, or any other fantasy character, really, for Halloween once you hit ten years old. Tara and Amanda were, apparently, going as “psychopathic freaks”, while most other girls were going to be some variation of either hippies or goths. But they told everyone (or in some cases, tricked me into telling them) that I was going to be Cinderella, and I became the laughingstock of the fifth grade. They even got the gym teacher to mock me about it one day during lunch. They were forever finding excuses to bring it up, even sometimes going so far as to claim they’d “forgotten” what I’d told them I was going to be. Tara did a perfect impression of Cinderella’s mouse friends every chance she got, and everyone giggled. I sat in class feeling like everyone’s eyes were burning into me, imagining how stupid they thought I’d look in the costume I’d been so proud of and excited about, that my aunt had spent so much of her hard-earned money to buy for me. I went home every day crying hysterically, begging my mother to somehow make it stop. For the first and only time in my life, I almost couldn’t wait for Halloween to be over.

I truly don’t remember much about Halloween itself that year. I know that there is actually a picture out there somewhere of me in the Cinderella costume, that was taken by my neighbor, Ruth. She even framed it for me, but I could never bring myself to display it anywhere, after everything that had happened. I don’t know what ever happened to it. I remember my mother saying that I should consider myself lucky that Halloween fell on a Friday that year, because by the time Monday rolled around, Tara and Amanda and the others might not even be thinking about Halloween anymore. (How anyone could not still be thinking about Halloween a mere three days after was and still is a great mystery to me.)  But that didn’t stop me from bawling my eyes out on Sunday night, begging both my parents to let me stay home because I was convinced that they weren’t going to let up. But oddly enough, I don’t recall the subject ever being brought up again. Tara and Amanda continued to torment me until we left for middle school, where I don’t recall ever seeing Amanda again, and where Tara became an all-out goth, suddenly dressing and acting like the people she would’ve made fun of the year before. Tara actually became very close friends with Laura, the goth girl I always admired and who was very friendly to me, but I avoided interactions with Tara as much as possible because her transformation was just bizarre to me, and I also never forgot what she’d put me through in elementary school.

I must say, though, that I am proud of myself for not allowing the Cinderella incident to break me when it came to Halloween. I did occasionally worry, and sometimes even lie, when it came to other kids in my class finding out what I was going to be, but the one thing I really took away from that year when I was ten was, I didn’t like the way dreading Halloween felt. It was wrong on every level, and I was wrong for allowing the criticism of two girls who, at the end of the day, really didn’t matter, take away the excitement and anticipation from me that year. That’s an October of anticipating Halloween that I will never get back, and perhaps that’s the real reason I was never able to let Tara in again despite her sudden transformation. Halloween season is such a fleeting thing, and I spent that one crying because of an overly confident girl and her childish games.

From then on, I have always promised myself that I would never let anyone take Halloween from me, in any capacity, ever again. I have never allowed anyone to tell me what I should or shouldn’t dress up as, or how or if I should celebrate. I have often had trouble finding my voice, in many situations, but Halloween is the one thing I will never be silenced about. 

And maybe, on some level, I have Tara and Amanda to thank for helping me find that spark of fight within myself.

Stay spooky, my friends.

(PS, this post is named after a short story I wrote almost immediately after the incident, describing it in detail.)