The Joy of Halloween

Well, I survived another Halloween, but still have yet to survive the week following Halloween, when the kids come to school sugared up beyond all sense, and fights over the candy that they brought to school (even knowing they're not supposed to bring it) abound.

Ah... the joys of Halloween!

I did have fun with them today, though. Since I knew they'd be all crazy, just because they were anticipating tonight, I decided to take a break from the normal classroom activities and share with them my favorite Edgar Allan Poe story, "The Black Cat."

This freaked them out, as I had intended.

If you've never read the story, it's about a man who loved animals and had a black cat he especially loved. He became an alcoholic, however, and he began being mean to his animals and his wife. In a drunken rage, he put the cat's eye out with a knife. He felt mildly guilty about harming the cat, but continued declining, eventually hanging the cat from a tree to kill him.

He then wanted another cat, since he missed the one he killed. He found one that looked almost exactly the same, but with a white spot on his chest.

He brought it home, and thought he'd love it, but he began to hate it, even as his now-abused-by-him wife loved it. The white spot also began to change into the shape of a gallows (I had to pause to explain many parts of the story to the kids, but they didn't know what a gallows was, until one remembered they had one in Pirates of the Caribbean 2).

So now he really hates the cat. He was going down the stairs to his cellar one day, and his wife was following, when the cat tripped him, making him furious. He seized and axe and attempted to strike the cat, but his wife stopped him. In his rage at being stopped, he turned the axe on his wife, killing her.

He then decides to dispose of the body (after several options are discarded) by bricking it up in the cellar. When the police investigate, the man is so confident, he shows them around, and when they're trying to leave, he tells them about how strong the building is, and raps on the wall in which he put his wife's body... well, he accidentally put the cat in with her, so the cat makes an eerie cry, and the man is caught.

Very Halloween-y.

I love watching their faces as they struggle to understand the almost archaic text, since they know it's creepy, and they know they should be scared, but sometimes the wording gets a little too tricky... Then when they go from not understanding to dawning comprehension, then revulsion... so priceless.

And everyone should read a classic author like Poe, right?

I worried vaguely about this being too creepy for them, but then I remember what they watch. I remember it's a classic. And I remember what they told me last year (and honestly, what I remember from my time in school) that they read Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the third grade. So I know they'll be fine. (I remember from my own 3rd grade year, and how the teacher read it, while a tape with a beating heart pounded in the background... it scared the mud out of me).

So we had fun. Plus, one of my kids was super-sweet, though, and brought me a caramel apple he'd made just for me. I was like... oohhhhhh! So sweet! I haven't eaten it yet, because I keep forgetting it's there, but I'm sure it's tasty.

Oh, and by the way... why do the students complain about having to come to school on Halloween? They actually ask me why they have to be at school... when I'm confused, they explain, "Well, it's a holiday, right?"

Heaven help us.