Halloween in 1991... The Hogg, The Witch, and The Broken Toe.
1991... What a terrible year.
I was in the 7th Grade. Halloween is my favorite holiday, always has been. I remember being really excited that a new girl enrolled in the GAWD AWFUL school I attended. She looked like Drew Barrymore, but she had an unfortunate last name... Hogg. Yep. Hogg.
The irony of this was that she wasn't fat, I was, and she liked me... so the fat kid hung around with a "hog." Get it? Luckily for me she didn't get this right away. It only took 3 weeks until she realized this irony as well as vaporizing. However, I will always believe that the catalyst for her disappearance from the school only 3 weeks after enrolling, had everything to do with what happened on Halloween in 1991.
She lived in an area of Dallas called Casa Linda. I loved this area because of it's Spanish style houses, cool shopping areas with Romanesque looking pillars and a movie theatre that held a very special place in my heart because it was the first theatre I had ever seen a movie in.
Just like the rare West Virginia sightings of The Mothman, I was never invited to do anything with anyone. When I was, a inter dimensional puncture in the fabric of space must've occurred in order for my peers to find me "cool" enough to hang out with.
Anyway...
This girl, as I've said, enrolled in the school I went to. For some reason, still unknown to me, she immediately liked me? She invited me to spend the night at her house on Halloween. I was pretty sure that she would figure out that her reputation as the "cool new girl" would be shattered by inviting me over to her house but little did I know at the time that it would be the events on Halloween that would forever seal my fate with The Hogg.
Halloween rolls around and she is super stoked about what we are going to do. She wouldn't tell me until we got back to her house but I quickly found out that her parents were not in on the plan. Being much like the character, "Butters" from South Park, anything that I could sniff out as being a possible "your in trouble now" situation, made me incredibly nervous. I usually would try and talk the person out of doing anything stupid but historically they would do it anyway and then blame it on me. I knew this well. In fact, it still kind of happens today. (Read my blog entitled, Narcissistic Rabbit & Friends.)
The Hogg wanted to go toilet paper houses in the neighborhood she lived in. In my neighborhood, if you did that, you'd be shot. In her neighborhood it was merely white people being mildly put out over having to get their Mexican yard man to clean up the next day. My neighborhood is probably where they contracted their Mexican day laborers. (not hating on Mexicans AT ALL... my neighborhood was hispanic and mostly black and we had a blast together being anything but rich white people with free time, believe that)
I kept saying to The Hogg, "why can't we just Trick or Treat? I mean, do we have to TP people's houses? We won't get any candy?" (said the fat kid... me)
She said the following verbatim, "(sigh) Look, if you want to be cool, you have to take some risks, duh! Trust me, it will be so much fun. You'll see. If you don't do it, I won't hang out with you anymore." Nuff said. I'm doing it. I was so desperate for a friend at school, I figured it was worth the risk. It wasn't.
That Halloween was one of those rare fall days that I can I remember as a kid when it was actually cold outside. Wind blowing, leaves falling, and the kind of chill that only happened when you were wearing a 100% Polyester costume from Kmart. The kind that made you sweat profusely when you were inside and then contract pneumonia when you were outside. I brought over to The Hogg's house, my stage makeup and various black clothing to ensure that I could be extra ghoul-like. She didn't want to put on any make up and said the following... verbatim... "Melodee, you are too old to be wearing costumes! We are doing what the teenagers do and that is NOT wearing a stupid costume for Halloween." Um... okay? (silent tear rolling down my face from that epic let down)
Trick or Treater's came and went and that is when The Hogg sprung into action... "come on! It's time." She handed me more toilet paper rolls than I had ever seen at any one house I'd ever been to. Toilet paper in my house was rationed out like bits of bread in the Soviet Union circa 1985. I remember thinking/knowing they were rich just from the stockpile of toilet paper they had and how by taking hoards of it, none of it would be noticed as "missing." I told her, "I can't carry all of this, isn't there a sack we can put it in or something?" She sighed and retrieved her dad's gym bag from the stack of expensive luggage in the storeroom. Again, it was even more of a sign to me how rich they were because I think we had one suitcase in my family and it was duct taped shut when we went on vacation.
We walk down the street, further and further away from her house. It was cold. So very cold. We roll up (no pun intended) to a house at the end of the block. It was our first target. She told me to take off my shoes so that my boots wouldn't "crunch the leaves and give us away." I argued that it was really cold and that I had a tendency to get pneumonia this time of year. She didn't care and just silently stared at me until I did what she asked. Took off my shoes and we began the toilet papering of shrubbery and various low hanging branches at this house. We succeeded in doing this undetected. I figured it was a success and we would go back to her house and watch television or something. After all, "The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," was coming on that night so I didn't want to miss that ritual I'd grown so accustomed to doing on Halloween.
She said, "um... no? We have like 5 more houses at least?!"
I remember this moment like it was yesterday. I began sweating because of two things that make me sweat on cue.
1. Rage- usually this comes from feeling trapped in a situation I have no control over.
2. Worry- I had paralyzing fear of getting into trouble with parents, cops, or feeling like I was disrespecting someone's property.
I over-rided the rage and worry and pressed on. I put my shoes back on and continued on the quest of wrapping houses. I think we wrapped about 7 more houses before THE house that ended everything.
The Witch House.
About 6 streets over and in the thicket of tons of willow trees and large vine type plants that shrouding a structure in a veil of scary was The Witch House. This house was an old stone built house with stained glass cathedral type windows, gargoyles guarding the sides, and cats... lots of cats. Anyone who knows me knows that I've never met a cat that liked me. Ever. Cats take one solid look at me and make a judgement call to attack the soft spots. I don't trust cats, I think they are the choice pets of demons and old people who sacrifice chickens to the dark overlord.
I took one look at this house and said, "nope." "Nope. I'm not doing it. You said 5 more houses and we've done like 8 houses and now you want me to toilet paper the devil's lair?" She told me that if I did this, we would be the only people who ever had the balls to toilet paper this house and blah blah... street cred... Okay fine.
I looked at the grass and said, "okay but seriously, can I keep my shoes on? The grass is wet and my feet are already freezing cold. Come on, please?"
DENIED. The Hogg said, "if there were any house that you don't need to be detected at, it's this one... no, shoes are comin' off!" Fine.
I asked her what the deal was with this house and I was extremely curious as to who would live in this vortex of pain and darkness. She told me it was a witch, like a real witch who has a cult that meets there on certain times of the month and various neighborhood pets had gone missing after these cult meetings. CRAZY RICH WHITE PEOPLE ARE THE CRAZIEST. Period. Anyway... She said that you can't let this woman see you because she will put a curse on you and frankly, I already figured I had a full grip of curses on me so I didn't need another one added to the stew of bad luck I had.
We crept slowly on our tippidy tip tip toes through the ever darkening yard of terror. The grass was so cold, so wet, and I started feeling numbness in my toes. We wrapped a tiny tree and I said, "okay we did it lets go." She was insistent that we wrap the vines that grew up the side of the house by the scary ass stained glass windows.
We crept some more... tip toe, tip toe, tip toe... stop, breathe, tip toe, tip toe... drawing ever closer to the epicenter of evil. I wandered off about 10 feet to the left of The Hogg and started feeling uncomfortable with how I was just wrapping up this area closest to the scariest year-round-not-halloween statue of a devilish looking thing. About 10 of the longest minutes goes by and I really can't feel my feet now. They are cold as ice, numb, and it's beginning to concern me. I moved over to the window that had the flickering candle on the ledge and that's when a black cat jumped up and "RAWRRRRRRRRERRERERERRRRR HISSSSSS HISSSSSS!"
I screamed and then covered my mouth and within seconds I look up and see a face staring at me from the stained glass window.
SCREAM, HOLLER, SCREAM n' HOLLER....
I just dropped everything and ran. I ran harder, faster, and with more conviction than I'd ever ran before. I was almost back to the street when I heard The Hogg say, "hurry up!!!" That's when my numb foot NFL kicked a 14 pound slab of limestone and watched it flip over itself in mid-air landing about 6 feet away and shattering.
I grabbed my shoes and we ran all the way back to The Hogg's house. The adrenaline I had was so intense that all I remember doing when we got back to the house was laughing and crying at the same time.
Just as the adrenaline wore off, we looked up and saw The Hogg's father who was scowling at us. My worst nightmare. I was "in trouble" and it wasn't even my own family that was mad... which to me was highly shameful and I thought myself better than that.
He said, "where have you guys been and Melodee, why does your foot look like that?"
Huh? OH SNAP! I looked down and my foot was the size of Shaq's. It was swollen, bloody, and the type of bruise I had was already black & maroon. It was still numb though so I said, "it doesn't hurt." Press forward about 10 minutes after it wasn't numb...."OH God, Oh God... I want to go home. Oh God. My foot hurts so bad. Oh my God. Oh God help. Heeeelllllllppppp!"
I threw the fit of the century. I told The Hogg that I wanted to go home and that I was going to scream until I got a ride back home. She woke her dad up and I got a very passive aggressive ride back home in which I was asked about 10 questions regarding our night of shame and now, agony. I told him what happened. I told him that I had kicked a rock at a full sprint with a numb foot because a Witch appeared in the window and her devil cat put a hex on me. (because to me, that's what happened)
The next day I went to the doctor. My middle toe(the important one) was broken pretty hard. I went back to school and The Hogg wasn't there. In fact, she never returned to that school. I will never know exactly what happened to her but I knew somehow it was my fault. I ratted her out pretty hard to her dad and my Pop called him up the next day after the doctor visit and gave him the verbal "1, 2, punch" and went off about how his kind was the reason a generation will grow up and be "lousy good fer nothin' spoiled assholes 'cause their daddy ain't takin' a look 'round his life to see what his priorities amount to... blah blah...." Chewin' and chompin' this guy up like he was the cause of the world's problems when actually my Pop was just mad that he had to fork out 100 bucks at the doctor's office only to find out that I was unsupervised until midnight on Halloween.
Many years later I drove past that "witches" house. I saw an old lady watering her beautiful plants outside and she waved at me as I drove by as though I lived in the neighborhood. I got a close look at her yard and I noticed something. There was a headstone in the front of her lawn with an engraved picture of a dog on it along with a sign mid-way through her yard that said, "no trespassing, beware of cats."
This "witch" had a grave site (that I kicked and shattered) with her dog's face on it and a sense of humor about her "attack cats." It also dawned on me that I was probably the reason for that trespassing sign being implemented in the first place.
I jotted down her address and sent her an apology card 10 years too late. I got a letter back in the mail which I was scared to open but did and it said,
"Thank you. It's nice to know that I got to be a part of your childhood memories. Don't worry about a thing dear. It's all part of growing up which I think you must be doing a fine job of."
Perspective. Get some.
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