Halloween, for me, is almost as magical a time of year as Christmas, and I've often wondered why. I've considered that perhaps I am a bit of a morbid personality, which is not an idea I loved. This year, being a part of this course, I'm wondering if it's not because it is, quite possibly, the most creative time of the year. People plan and dream and try to top last year's costumes and decorations. They look to be inspired. They consider the effect they want: scary, sexy, funny, etc. and they plot and conspire and execute something for the sheer joy of it. I figure it's either the creativity factor that has made me so enamored, or it's the excess of free candy.
This year, I took my costume cue from a picture I saw on Facebook last year of a child's costume. I've been planning on it since then. I did some previous work (which I already wrote about), and then I ran out of energy. (Given my HUGE love for the season, this speaks to my alarming difficulty with energy. Junior, as we call him/her, is sapping all my reserves!) Fortunately, I have an incredibly supportive husband who took over and rigged it up using his hockey pads...never would have thought of that on my own! I usually go for the scary/creepy vibe with my costumes because, well, you can at Halloween. The rest of the year, you have to pretend you don't believe in haunts and things that go bump in the night.Friday, the 30th was also our school's Sadie Hawkins dance, one of many traditional student union sponsored activities.
CHS has another admittedly odd tradition that happens with Sadie's... a marriage room and ceremony. Students pick a theme for the entire dance. (This year was "Sadie Goes Neon") Then a group of teachers, select students, or members of the parent committee (depending on who's willing and able that year) choose a coordinating theme for the marriage room. It's kept a surprise, and that night, students partner up and take someone with them in to the room to be 'married'. We have cheesy fake rings, we write and enact a wacky ceremony that fits the theme, and we generally have a lot of fun with it. Usually, students get married several times that evening, which I find particularly funny given the Mormon heritage of our community.
This year I was in charge of the marriage room because I came up with the bright idea (literally and sarcastically figuratively) of creating an outer space setting using black lights. My eager committee of grade 10 girls and I covered all six sides of a room with black plastic. We created neon spaceships about 5 ft. tall/wide, and the shop helped us build a tunnel, a "worm hole", for students to enter through. This took 'just a few' after-school hours, but it was a lot of fun.On Friday night, three teachers - myself included - came dressed as aliens. We switched off different roles, the funnest one being the person who 'married' five couples at a time. We adlibbed a fair amount, but stuck loosely to the following script that I wrote:
(Meeting the travelers as they first come through the wormhole, popping out and scaring them perhaps.) Welcome, weary travelers from a distant time and place to the alternate universe (strange long gibberish with tongue clicks, etc.). You look to be of planet earth, so-called Homo sapien, so I will endeavor to speak slowly and clearly to help your underdeveloped brains understand. My name is (strange long gibberish with tongue clicks, etc.), which in your tongue means “most beautiful/handsome one of great wisdom and wealth.” I am the royal consulate of marital status, and I must inform you that in our universe (as well as your own – you just haven’t fully discovered this yet), you cannot physically survive in our atmospheres unless you form partnerships. You have a limited amount of time before you expire, unless we have you immediately joined in what you call wedlock. [We, of course, call it the more poetic and romantic term (funny shrieking, unpleasant noise).] Please pair off in front of an appropriate transportation pod for the commencement of the matrimonial ceremony before your health suffers further. Look! You are already looking terrible – so sickly, so horrifying.
Turn to your appropriate partner, and lock eyes to communicate telepathically. Never mind, I forgot your appalling mental incapacities. Just turn and smile – you are about to save each other from painful suffocation.
Now for the primitive spoken vows, since we must. Please repeat after me: "I, humanoid life form, take you, fellow space journeyer, to be my partner as we boldly go where no man has gone before. You will be my stargazing companion, forsaking all other alien life forms (excepting, of course, the event of abduction). I am devoted to your extraterrestrial well-being, safety and happiness. The force will be strong with us."
If you agree to take this equal as someone with whom you can jump aboard your identified alien craft and continue your space explorations “to infinity and beyond”, please respond with, “Nanu, nanu” (or some other strange, maybe even difficult, phrase).
Now to fully contractualize your union, create the sacred Vulcan sign with your right hand, extend it, and "kiss" your spouse.
The rings you were given earlier will symbolize your enterprise, and allow for your continued breathing in our universe. Please exchange them now. Go forward; live long and prosper!
I guess I'd just say that it was a busy, but very fun, week. I may not have been writing journal entries, but I was definitely exercising some creative muscle.
