Halloween night 1958, normally I would have been excited – you know, an eleven-year-old kid and Halloween just go together like pork and beans or ice cream and cake – but not this October 31st. You see, I had been so sick that there was no way I could have gotten out of bed to go trick or treating. In fact, October 20th marked my third straight month of my illness. Now it was going on my fourth month doing nothing but staying in bed. There was a time when I enjoyed my sleep, and the comfort of my bed, yet now, as you could probably imagine, I hated both.
A few of my friends had come by earlier on that Halloween day and said, “Come on, come on Will, get outta bed and lets go out and get some candy.” For the longest time I hadn’t seen my friends. Ever since the middle of summer I had been out of action, no more football, or scratch baseball games for me. And also, it looked as if I was going to have to repeat the sixth grade since I had missed the first day and each day after. It did my heart very good that they even remembered me. However, my heart was broken that I couldn’t go with them. Next to Christmas, Halloween is the best holiday for someone my age.
Let me tell you, it was pretty difficult for me to hear our front door bell ring constantly, my mom opening it, and her voice tell some neighborhood kid, “Oh, look at that scary costume. Here’s some candy for you.” All the other kids were getting candy, and I was stuck in bed. Heck, I couldn’t even eat any of the candy she had bought for Halloween from the store; my throat was hurting me so badly. This was the first time I had had pneumonia, and let me tell you… I hated it, and hoped it was the last time.
During the three months of my sickness there had been some scary times for me. Once I had to be rushed to the hospital, I don’t even remember that though, I was so out of it. Apparently, I was convulsing and had a fever of a hundred and five; that was during the first week of my illness. And since then, there had been eight other trips to the emergency room. Thank goodness I’m over that; it feels good to finally be getting better. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling well enough to go trick or treating.
My mom – she’s a great mom by the way – knew how much I loved Halloween, so three days prior to the spooky night, she brought a pumpkin into my room, and let me draw a face on it, then my brother carved it out. That was really nice of her to do that, but all it did was make me miss not being able to go out with my friends in a costume on Halloween night, that much more.
So there I was, lying in bed on Halloween night. I had been hurting that whole day; my bones would ache, my head would ache… everything just ached. But my mother had given me some pain pills, and I was feeling a little better. There was a warning on the pill bottle that said: ‘Causes Drowsiness’. Yet, I didn’t feel tired at all. Therefore, although it hurt to move, I decided to take a walk out into the living room to see what was going on. It was the first time I had gotten out of bed, without the assistance of a paramedic, ever since that last part of July.
Getting up out of bed, I was surprised to find that it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I knew I was getting better, but I didn’t think I was getting this much better. Normally, or at least during the past three weeks, when I got out of bed, my bones, and my muscles would just ache like mad, like I said earlier – my bones felt like sandpaper, rubbing against one another, when I moved – but now, the pain was all but gone. The pain pills my mom gave me must have been working, because, actually, I was feeling pretty darn good, not even a headache.
Maybe it wasn’t too late for me to go out, I considered, and then came to the conclusion that it probably was too late. And, of course I didn’t have a costume to dress up in anyway.
I walked down the hallway, slowly, still amazed at the lack of pain, but not wanting to aggravate it by moving more quickly, like an eleven year old boy normally would move. Walking down the hall, I saw the big bucket, that at the beginning of the night was full of Smarties, Tootsie Pops, and Lic ‘n’ Stick’s, now empty of any candy, next to the front door. ‘Boy, it looks like I missed out completely’, I thought, ‘And just when I was beginning to feel better.’
To Be Continued...
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