Scariest Thing

While we don’t celebrate holidays at our school, or allow the kids to come in costume, the room is always abuzz towards the end of October with talk of the upcoming candy extravaganza that is Halloween. From my lunchtime conversation with a group of kids one year, I learned that we had a Miss America, a Hermione Granger, and one Generalized Embodiment of Scariness that included fake, squirting blood.
  “It’s probably the scariest thing I’ve ever been for Halloween” Tristan informed me as he finished his peanut butter sandwich. His seriousness implied that this was really saying something - that in all of his seven Halloweens since birth, he had donned some rather frighting costumes and that this year's was scarier than even the ones he wore as a baby or a toddler--if you can believe it.