An indoor Halloween.

[Bruce Atchison]

Most children spend a few hours each October 31st happily going from house to house trick-or-treating. That pleasant pastime was withheld from me in 1964 when I found myself 500 miles from home in a boarding school. From my Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) book, here is an excerpt describing what it was like.
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During previous Halloween evenings, I wandered the neighbourhoods surrounding my home, happily filling my bag with treats. Instead of visiting the nearby houses, our supervisors arranged a party for us. Both the junior boy's and girl's dorms were summoned to our Play Room. We sat on the floor in a large circle. The girl's dorm supervisor handed out metal rods to each of us as she said, "Let's light sparklers for Miss Boyce." One of them was lit at a point in the circle and each person lit their sparkler from their neighbour's.

Soon a ring of fizzling lights illuminated the Play Room. I marvelled at that awesome sight. Those little white flames lit up the entire area. The totally blind children did need help from the adults to light their sparklers but everybody enjoyed the experience.

Though both supervisors gave us candy afterwards, I missed going door to door while wearing a costume. Much of the fun of Halloween was diminished for me that evening.
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On subsequent Halloweens, we were escorted around the neighbourhoods surrounding the institution by our supervisors. Though the dorm party was nice, it wasn't how I felt Halloween ought to be celebrated.

Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant examples of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. This 196-page paperback sells for $25.00 through the PayPal-equipped Inscribe writers group website. It also contains 6 black and white photographs.