I'm Turning Into A Monster For Halloween

I think my body is trying to get prepared for Halloween. This would be fine if it was something I wanted, but I had no plans to look like a Halloween monster this year. In fact, I was considering skipping the holiday for the most part because I am busy with three jobs. My body, apparently, has other ideas.

Two years ago I fulfilled a Halloween fantasy as I switched from being someone scared on Halloween to being the one doing the scaring, at a haunted house no less. This transformation from the scared to the scarer was such a delight I decided to document it, complete with photos I shot, for a Blogcritics piece.

While I knew that, intellectually, I enjoyed becoming – for a few nights – a scary, evil scientist, I did not know how much my body enjoyed it as well.

And then the changes began. It began, as all good transformations into scary monsters must, with the bloody eye.

I was teaching one day when students said, “Mr. Scott, why is your eye all bloody?” I thought about the past 48 hours to ensure I had not poked myself in the eye with a stick, been in a bar brawl, and gotten smashed or anything else that might cause one eye to be filled with blood. I could not recall anything improper taking place, but that did not change the fact that half my right eye was filled with blood.

My doctor said a capillary in my eye had burst, which he described as a common odd occurrence, nothing to be alarmed about. How was I to know this was the start of a fight between my body and brain, akin to that in Evil Dead 2?

Over the next few days, as the blood drained from my eye, only a few people spoke of the matter directly, but I noticed some showing me a little more respect while others stepped away from me like I might be a contagious zombie.

That was about a month ago. Two weeks ago the next step took place. Again it was noticed by the students -- always observant and aware of any change in a teacher that could be the focus of their attention instead of, say, the lesson.

Article Author: Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education.

He is an in-house media critic, a recovering Tetris addict and a proud uncle.

Visit Scott Butki's author page — Scott Butki's Blog