It was a warm fall in Drayton Valley. I was in Grade 7, the year was 1983. America had just put it’s first woman in space on the shuttle Challenger, the economy was in the toilet, and Fraggle Rock debuted to great success.
Return of the Jedi had come out that summer at the DV Drive-in, and WarGames had hit the theatres teaching me how to get free phone calls and war dial into the phone, power, and gas companies. The Police released “Every Breath You Take” and Micheal Jackson was dominating with “Beat It” and “Billie Jean.”
Cabbage Patch Kids and Glo Worms were a big deal, and Mom had already started a frantic search to get Paula one of each. That’s probably why Mom and I were at ‘The Monkey Store’ — the drug store on Main Street. We called it that because there was a robot monkey on a trapeze stuck to the ceiling that would do flips and spins, and amuse us kids.
It was at The Monkey Store that I saw the mask. It was an expensive latex rubber zombie mask, all grey and black, with blood dripping from long teeth. I was in love with it, and decided that I wanted to be a mummy that Halloween, and that would be the perfect mask to go with it. Desi and Darren had taken me to some kind of horror double feature at the drive in featuring mummies, and I thought they were super cool.
But it was too much money and we were in a hurry so she said no. I don’t remember if we found Paula’s gifts there or not that day, but I remember leaving and feeling disappointed.
That weekend, Mom had to work on Saturday like usual. She always worked her ass off to keep us afloat, and many times we’d join her down at LTV. Either to keep her company, or help tidy up, or some days I’d even help the bottom hole pump guy fix something or get to drive the forklift when Mom wasn’t in the back.
But not this Saturday. It was a glorious Saturday, probably in September. I got to sleep in, watch cartoons like Spider-Man and Rocket Robin Hood, and play with my Lego. I’m not sure where my sister was, but Mom had probably dropped her off at Grandma’s house or something.
Anyway. I’m downstairs finishing probably my third or fourth bowl of Cheerios, watching the last of the Saturday morning cartoons and trying to figure out how to build a Super Star Destroyer out of my Lego, when I hear a pounding on the back door.
Which I ignored. I mean, who would pound on the back door? If it was Mom, she would let herself in. If it wasn’t, they would probably go away and leave me to the problem I had at hand: how to build an accurate model of a 19km long Star Wars spaceship with my pile of Lego?
But the banging didn’t stop. Remember, this is small town DV where we probably didn’t have the back door locked or anything. So what the heck could the problem be?
Annoyed, I walked slowly up the stairs to the back door landing. There was nobody at the window. Shrugging my shoulders, I turned around and started to go back down the stairs. But there was another loud Bang!
So I turned around and opened the door… and nobody was there. I remember our back deck well, looking out onto the grass and the detached garage. Our rabbit hutch was there, with our one or two rabbits hopping around lazily in the sunshine.
“That’s weird,” I thought.
And then someone jumped out at me from around the corner with a grey scary face, holding their hands up menacingly, and said “Boo!”
I was scared shitless. I fell backward, and luckily we had a low bench there to catch me. I was frozen stiff. It was a zombie!
Who pulled off the mask from The Monkey Store, and it was Mom. She got some kind of money unexpectedly, and had bought the mask for me, and thought it would be funny to scare the crap out of me.
She saw that my face was totally white, and apologized and hugged me, but I was furious with her. She had gotten me good.
That lasted for about 10 seconds when I realized that I had the mask! I was going to be an awesome vampire that year, and wanted to start to work on my costume right away. Mom kissed me and said she had to go back to work, and left me to it.
