Class party days obviously aren't as educational as other days at school. Even if the parties only last an hour or so, the kids spend much more of the day thinking about the upcoming party than focusing on any learning that should take place.
Believe it or not, class parties have become fairly political in the past few years, with Halloween being the biggest potential firestorm on the list. For some people Halloween is just a chance for kids to wear costumes and make-up and wigs and funny hats and so on, dressing in whatever ways will get the biggest laughs or draw the most attention. But for other people it’s a precarious day when the kids are in danger of being exposed to any and all varieties of terror and violence through frightening masks and fake blood and phosphorescent goo, all of which will undoubtably instigate weeks of nightmares. The kids themselves, for the most part, just want to have a fun time and enjoy a day at school with their friends when they’re allowed to do something out of the ordinary, like play games or dress up have treats. In many cases this has led to some schools or grade levels or individual classes tweaking their party themes and renaming them “Harvest Festivals.” Which is decent work-around I guess, and the kids don’t care much as long as they get to have their special day. And celebrating the harvest is appropriate enough, because it is October after all, and apparently we live in the 1700s.
At my school, the Halloween / Harvest breakdown happens by grade level. My grade has always come down on the Halloween side of things and probably will until we’re told not to. I honestly don’t care one way or the other, outside of one small detail: If we were to hold a harvest festival instead of a Halloween party, I would look terribly out of place dressed like a big white bunny.
Several years ago my younger sister Erin was dying, stricken with the astonishingly rare variety of lung cancer that occurs in non-smokers. After fighting through some aggressive treatments, she was given a terminal diagnosis in the late summer. She was the activities director at an assisted living complex and worked as long as she could but reached a point when she had to stop, which hadn’t been an easy concession for her to make. It also meant that she wasn’t going to be wearing her bunny suit to work on Halloween that year. Our older sister had made the suit for her years before. It was white, fuzzy, and inescapable, the kind of attention-getting costume that was self-deprecating and in your face all at the same time.
Erin had begun downsizing her belongings that fall, and as Halloween approached I thought back to the bunny suit. I had never willingly worn costumes to school before and became theatrically grouchy about such ideas whenever they were brought up. Wearing the bunny suit to school would catch people so completely off guard it was worth considering. I e-mailed Erin to ask her what had happened to it. She thought it had wound up in our parents’ garage, and pieced together what I was thinking. “That would rock,” she replied. “Your kids would love it.”
I wasn’t sold on the idea and knew I’d be setting myself up for some pretty serious embarrassment, but decided to go for it when I thought of Erin, stuck at home that year with no energy to do anything, no costume to wear and nowhere to wear it. And if the thought of my wearing the bunny suit would bring a couple smiles to her face while she spent her day fighting back her fear and depression, it was worth doing. “I love it,” she wrote when I finally made up my mind. “Please have someone take a photo.” Knowing what the reaction would be, I assured her that wouldn’t be a problem.
I was at school early on the morning of the party day to make sure I could smuggle the suit in unseen. I called one of my friends to come to my room and help with the make-up since I didn’t have a mirror. Her reaction was a good preview of the abuse that would be piled on me throughout the day, but we couldn’t get the make up kit to work at all. We eventually dismissed it the cheap piece of grocery store junk that it was and dug some washable markers out of a student desk instead. They did the job nicely.
Most people on the staff laughed like I had never seen them laugh before. A few managed to keep straight faces and play along, but the effect worked exactly like I thought it would. Eventually the make up issue was resolved by an expert. One of my students was dressed as a zombie cheerleader, and even though she wasn’t wearing her make-up during our class party, she has practiced extensively with the kit that came with her costume. "You have to get your face wet first, and then it works," she said. And it did. So she redid my face for me, and I finally looked like a bunny for the last two hours of the day. Several pictures were taken, and I was able to e-mail them to Erin that evening. Knowing how much she enjoyed them made it worth the embarrassment.
The following Halloween came around only weeks after she had died. I was destroyed, angry and depressed in the aftermath, and was doing little more than sleepwalking through my life with no sense of bearing or purpose. But I still decided to wear the bunny suit again as a tribute, even if it was something that only a few people would know the reason behind why I was wearing it. Because frankly, the thing is a pain in the butt to wear. It’s unimaginably hot. The ears flop down in front of my face and block my vision, the head is constantly twisting sideways on its own to try and cover my left eye, and the little bunny mittens make it next to impossible to pick up anything and write while staying in costume, to say nothing of the discomfort that comes from walking around without shoes all day because bunnies don’t wear shoes and it looks even more stupid to do so. And since they only way in and out of this thing is a velcro strip down the back, simple things like using the bathroom or putting keys in a pocket become pretty impractical.
I still wear it, all the years later, and still as a tribute even though most people only think its just a costume. It’s become something of a tradition at school: Little kids jump and wave when they pass me in the hall that day, and for the rest of the year will point at me and shout “YOU’RE THE BUNNY!” like I’d forgotten about it. If there ever was a year I decided not to wear it, the grief I’d collect from much of the staff, and especially the students, would be worse than just enduring the thing for another year. But as much as I gripe I have to admit the suit has become a distinctive hallmark, and if / when the day comes when our Halloween celebration becomes more harvest-oriented, I’ll miss not having to drag it out.
And even though I’ve probably now worn it more times than Erin ever did, I still think of it as hers. In fact just a couple of years ago I’d gotten an e-mail from someone at a different school asking about it. They were having some kind of reading night or whatever and had heard through a connection to my school that I had a bunny suit which would fit perfectly with their event, and wondered if they’d be able to borrow it.
My reply: “No, I’m sorry. It’s not my suit. I only borrow it.”
