Masks

Those of you who know me might know that Halloween is my mother’s favorite holiday; those of you that know my mother would certainly know how much that makes sense.  Last year, as Spain’s Halloween is in its infancy and the majority of the decorations and costumes to be found here are generic and shameful, my mom sent me some fun stuff that I could bring to my class of third-graders.  Among those things were two masks, merely plastic with elastic strings attached but creatively painted and definitely creepy.  One was a Medusa with brightly colored hair-snakes and a menacing countenance, and one was an eerie, yellow monkey-ish thing.  Both fit my face perfectly, which was disconcerting.

I saved these masks and the other stuff she sent me to bring to school this year, along with new Halloween stuff she sent me last week.  On Thursday night, the 30th, I carved a small pumpkin and roasted the seeds all by myself for the first time (my pumpkin’s face came out looking mildly retarded, but that was more due to the one crappy knife I had to work with, difficult to maneuver).  On Friday morning I packed up the carved pumpkin and the seeds, some monster finger puppets, some rubbery body parts, and other assorted goodies, then remembered the masks and threw them into a pretty, reusable bag that is highly functional and very handy, as it folds up and snaps together to stuff into your regular bag, but it doesn’t have a zipper or snaps.

I hopped onto my regular train for my hour-long commute to my school, with my Halloween bag on the floor under my seat and between my feet.  My main concern was that we didn’t have too bumpy of a ride, lest my bag go flying and my homely pumpkin shatter, leaving the children on the train scarred from the Halloween Train Carnage.  Although probably only American children would be affected by that — it turned out that most of my kids had never even seen a pumpkin in real life.  Anyway, about halfway through the ride I thought I heard something hit the floor either under my seat or near me, but it sounded kind of like a ball, and I didn’t see anything rolling around, and I glanced down at my bag on the floor and didn’t see anything hanging precariously out of my bag.  We arrived at my stop, I grabbed my stuff, pushed my way through the stinky people with the bad morning breath and went up the escalator.  Nearing the top, I glanced into my bag and noticed that my masks were gone.  I felt momentarily helpless and devastated, and looked back at the train as it disappeared and I knew I couldn’t go back.

I felt like crying for a second.  But then I thought about what would inevitably happen at some point later that day.  I started chuckling to myself imagining some Spaniard (meaning someone still relatively unaccustomed to Halloween festivities) finding two strange, terrifying Medusa and monkey masks under their seat on the train.  I decided that that was well worth me losing the masks.