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HALLOWEEN
Being a Witch Taught Me How Not to Hate
Fear and hate are the scariest things
I often think of what really scares me. Is it death? or ghosts? a loud sound in the night? or monsters? or dark forests?
No, I think the scariest thing in life is being hated.
I remember one Halloween a long time ago. It was once upon a time in a far away country that didn’t celebrate Halloween. But we lived near a compound of American expats who all were eager to Trick-or-Treat even if the world around them didn’t know what the heck we were doing.
I was small but not too small, I was 9 years old. I remember that we didn’t have any stores to go to buy the latest and greatest out-of-the-box costumes, so we had to be creative.
Mother thought it best that I be transformed into a witch.
She found a long black wig, made a pointed hat from black construction paper, powdered my face white, gave me a mole, painted my lips green, and molded a nose out of puddy. She even found long sharp plastic fingernails.
I wore dad’s black coat that we pinned up so it wouldn’t drag on the ground. We had a switch broom from the gardener that had real twigs. I looked just like the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz, one of the scariest creatures I…
