Halloween Fun (?) I haven't always been too thrilled about the idea of Halloween-until now.

In my Communications class we were required to give a total of 6 hours of community service. My group and I volunteered at a spook alley that an over-achieving librarian was putting on at her elementary school. I thought that we were in for a very long day as I heard of the plan when my group and I went to meet with her before hand to see exactly what we were getting ourselves into. We were amazed to see how elaborate the spook alley was.

I was a zombie with another person in my group. Our room was very industrious and creative with a graveyard scene (see above picture) made out of a leaf-patterned tarp--also layered with real leaves-- hoisted up on cinderblocks. This gave us the ability to lie underneath the tarp and crawl around. The tarp then had sliced holes acting as coffins so that my partner and I could rise from our silent slumber. Each time a little kid would come by we were supposed to slowly "raise from the dead." Previous to coming to our room, kids were screaming and even crying from werewolves and chainsaws. They just simply strolled passed our room and weren't scared at all.

Let's face it. I'm just not a scary person. I felt so bad for some of the kids who were scared and crying that I just waved at them and didn't attempt to be scary at all. I guess I empathized with the kids who were pleading with their parents to take them out. Like how Doritos don't agree with me, neither does Halloween. I never have had much fun at Halloween time. The first thing I think of when I hear of Halloween is the time my little brother threw-up all over my dad while trick-or-treating and how that was quickly the end of trick-or-treating that year. I've never been one for the scariness of Halloween either. I loathe watching scary movies, and I definitely have hated haunted houses. I remember I was about 8 years old when I went in the Lagoon haunted house with my dad. It wasn't like the extreme "Nightmare on 13th" scary, but the kiddy-haunted-house-scary. My dad and I were in the haunted house car and I was crying and completely terrified! Finally, after three quarters of the ride was over, a nice Lagoon employee asked if I wanted a flashlight. How pathetic!

I had a lot of fun at this service project haunted house mainly because I was on the other side of the table. I was the one scaring the children. I had no fear of the people in the haunted house; they were my friends. We are all afraid of things we don't know and now that I am on the "other side" I am now more considerate of Halloween- but don't expect me to buy all the Alfred Hitchcock classics any time soon.