Thursday, October 30, 2003

Twas the Night Before Halloween

And all through the haunted house...

Gaggles of teenagers were dressed in robes, fright wigs and rubber masks...

Kelly's school was doing a fundraiser by running a haunted house, and Kelly, never having been to one, but having watched about a thousand episodes of Scooby Doo, decided that she was willing to try it. So we went this evening. It was set up in an old house which has served as a church in Tualatin since I've been here. They divided up the house with plywood partitions painted black, draped everything in 'cobwebs', filled the halls with fog, played loud spooky sound effects, and had an annoying passage lit with strobe lights.

Kelly and I entered, paid our $8, and ran the gauntlet. Kelly's only question as we paid, was "where's the bathroom?" Unfortunately for her, it was halfway through the haunted house. We began our tour, and Kelly kept asking for the bathroom. Some costumed geek jumped out behind us, and I gave a faux shriek. Kelly turned around and said "hello, we just want to find the bathroom."

She repeated this performance a couple more times, and at first I thought she was unimpressed by the whole situation. But the farther we got into the house, the more agitated she became, and about halfway through, she began sobbing and started repeating, over and over, "I just want to go home!" I assured her that we'd be out soon, and held her hand. We wove through the maze of plywood partitions, and eventually got out.

Total time in the house, about five minutes. That's even more expensive than those parking lot 'carnivals' that pop up outside K-Mart. For five minutes, Kelly and I could ride the mini-roller coaster for a couple of bucks.

Kelly's verdict is that she never, ever wants to do a haunted house again! She blames the fact that she needed to go to the bathroom (even though she went before we left) for her emotional overload. She could have handled ghouls if she hadn't been drained already by bodily distractions.

Oh well, I'm proud of her for trying something new. Looking forward to Halloween tomorrow night!

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