When I was 5, my mother and I were settling into our first apartment in Nashville after leaving her friends and my father behind in New York. Our new neighbors, Jack and Barbara, were loud, friendly city folk who somehow felt familiar. Their presence softened the blow of the move, helping us transition into the South, and into a town filled with strangers.
Jack and Barbara became my babysitters, and their dog Reuben became my playmate. Though I can't remember their last name — or even if they had children or grandchildren of their own — they were deep into the age of grandparenting with me, and at a time when I desperately needed it. I fondly remember their kindness, and particularly Jack's crazy stories.
The accepted lore was that Jack had been struck by lightning three times — I say "lore" because of course that's completely ridiculous. But he was so charming, and he commanded such respect around the apartment complex, that no one questioned it when he said things like, "You know, my sense of pain is substantially diminished since I've been struck by lightning." Or, "The second time I was struck by lightning, there wasn't a tree in sight, so you just never know." As far as I was concerned, he had been struck by lightning three times, and I believed everything else he told me. My young, recently single mother also willingly submitted herself to his tutelage.
Jack taught me how to play all kinds of exotic board games, how to use the steering wheel of a car and how to teach a dog to eat from the table without anyone else seeing. But it wasn't all fun and games. Jack had an encyclopedic knowledge of all the potential horrors that could befall a child, and he made sure I stayed safe by teaching me the many ways that most people were plotting the heinous demise of children, and how to steer clear of them.
One memorable lesson took place at the apartment playground, where before allowing me to go down the slide, Jack checked the underside at the bottom. "Amanda, there are bad people who hide razors at the bottom of slides so that children will cut their genitals on the way down," he explained. I didn't know the exact definition of the word "genitals," but I got the picture. Terrified, I waited dutifully until he told me the coast was clear. I got all the fast food and television I wanted — it was the '80s, after all — but the playground was a place to practice extreme caution, where the only thing waiting for me at the bottom of that slide was the death of my carefree childhood. If I'd managed to survive the playground that summer, perhaps I'd make it to Halloween.
Halloween: a bubbling cauldron of potential tragedy. According to Jack, razors were just the beginning of the wickedness being stuffed into so many plastic pumpkins. Drugs, poison, detergent ... chances are, someone was dumping all of that into my goody bag. After trick-or-treating with the other kids in my stifling, flammable Smurf costume — not dangerous at all, right? — I was forbidden to touch anything until my mother dumped every piece of candy onto the living room floor and combed through the stash, deciding what was safe to eat.
Anything that was homemade or removed from its original packaging was out. I watched my mother as she tossed what looked like innocuous cellophane bags filled with treats into the garbage. My mother's choices of what to take out of my stash was met by the occasional approving nod from Jack — she was learning well. Meanwhile, I wondered who would take the time to bake for children who were perfect strangers. Ask Jack and he'd say an evil witch, that's who, and we were all little Hansels and Gretels, perilously close to death, all because we wanted a little candy. I'm pretty sure I saw something closer to satisfaction than outrage on my mom and Jack's faces — validation of their fears.
Today, parents don't have to look for the poison. We've decided it's the candy itself — the evil processed sugar was there all along. Thus I protect my children by stealing most of their candy and eating it myself, because I'm an adult and I know better. Besides, I can find other things about Halloween on which to focus my anxieties, which would probably make my mother (and Jack) proud. For example, the neighbors' children might be festooned in more uniquely noncommercial costumes than mine, or my kids might ask for one of those monstrous inflatable spiders for our front yard. And I'm already bracing myself for the inevitable, when my 4-year-old daughter asks me if she can be Elsa (if you don't have children or haven't flipped on the TV or left the house in the past year, that's one of the characters from Frozen).
"Ummm ... the store is out of those," I'll lie, as I contemplate what brand of eyeliner would produce a fierce yet subtle unibrow, giving her an edge over the other preschool Frida Kahlos.
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