I Choose Darkness: A Holiday Essay by Jenny Lawson

Author:Jenny Lawson [Lawson, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2022-09-29T07:00:00+00:00

Compared to today’s Halloween costumes, these look a bit pathetic, but I think it’s pretty impressive what we created with just our imaginations and poor fashion choices. And technically we didn’t have to look that great to trick-or-treat because we lived in the country and were surrounded by cotton fields. Going door-to-door was never going to be an option.

This isn’t to say that we didn’t trick-or-treat when we were very little. We totally did. My parents may have been poor, but they were inventive and wanted us to experience the same things as normal kids, but in a safer way; so my mom had my sister and me run laps around our house in the dark and knock on the door, and then my mom would pretend to be different people every time as she dropped caramels and cooking chocolate into our bags. Honestly getting the exact same candy each time was a bit meh, but she switched it up by offering us bites of mashed potatoes or other leftovers from dinner and sometimes pretending not to be home at all, which I thought was very creative at the time but, now that I think about it, may have just been when she was mixing herself a drink and needed a minute of quiet.

It was actually a little terrifying. The country nights were pitch black, and Lisa was dressed as a ghost and kept tripping on her sheet, so it felt like each lap around our tiny house took an hour, but in an exhilarating and thrilling sort of way, as I was still very much on the lookout for satanists, who I saw lurking in every shadow. I swear that each time we raced around the darkest side of the house, I held my breath because each time it seemed that a large, shadowy figure drew closer out of the darkness. I told myself it was probably my imagination and decided against telling my mother because I knew she’d say that meant it was time to come in, and it was worth the risk of satanists to acquire still more caramels (this was during those childhood years when sneaking a spoonful of sugar to get you through the day was perfectly acceptable). So we kept racing around the house, and each time the figure seemed a little closer, and I told myself it was a bush that just happened to be six feet tall and was mobile for some reason, and this is exactly why children can’t be expected to make good decisions because the last time I went around the house, I saw the enormous hulking figure standing before us, blocking our path. Lisa’s ghost sheet had slipped down her face, so she was unaware of our impending doom as she said, “Why are we stopping?” but I didn’t have the breath to scream.

The giant creature’s long stringy hair fluttered in the breeze, and it laughed in a low, guttural way as it peered down at us, and

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