There\u2019s a little game I refuse to play. It\u2019s called, “You can\u2019t be friends with me if you\u2019re friends with [fill in the blank]!” My stock answer to that is, “Fine, I\u2019m sorry you feel that way. I guess we can\u2019t be friends.” I don\u2019t care if the person saying it is my best friend at the time, and [fill in the blank] is someone I hardly know.<\/p>\n
I also learned, back in grade school, not to judge someone based on others\u2019 opinions. Oh, granted, others opinions hold some sway; I may be more cautious in getting to know someone if I\u2019ve been given specific reasons to be, or I may be more open if people I trust and respect speak highly of the person. I can also be persuaded by facts \u2013 like rap sheets. But opinions and hearsay have no power, and it’s always wise to consider the source of your information or your feelings about something, before acting on it.<\/p>\n
One Halloween, my friends and I dressed up and met on the road to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. It was a small, close-knit village; my mom had grown up there, too, and many of my friends were children of her school friends. None of us could make a move without it getting back to our parents, so we were all pretty well behaved. And the neighborhood was safe; we were allowed to roam, mostly unsupervised, for several blocks at night, ringing doorbells and begging for candy, provided we only went to houses that had their porch lights on.<\/p>\n
Just around the corner from my house, there was an older wooden home set back from the road, almost within reach of the railroad tracks. I\u2019d never been there before, on Halloween, but the light was on so I started up the sidewalk. My best friend, Mary, and her sister, Val, stopped me.<\/p>\n
“You can\u2019t go there!”<\/p>\n
“Why not?”<\/p>\n
“Because that woman\u2019s a witch. She hates kids. She\u2019s got a gun, and she\u2019ll shoot you. And she\u2019s got a guard dog. He\u2019s mean. He\u2019ll eat you.”<\/p>\n
I thought this was the stupidest thing I\u2019d ever heard, but they were quite serious, judging by their wide eyes and pale faces. They tugged at my sleeve and tried to drag me away from the house. “The light\u2019s on,” I said.<\/p>\n
“So?”<\/p>\n
“Well, wouldn\u2019t the light be OFF if she didn\u2019t want us to come to the door?”<\/p>\n
“She\u2019ll shoot you with her gun. She\u2019ll sic her dog on you.”<\/p>\n
I pulled free and marched right up to the front door. Val hung back, on the road, ready to run for help. Mary timidly joined me. I rang the bell.<\/p>\n
The door opened, and the woman who answered it peered out at us through Coke-bottle glasses that made her eyes seem three times larger than normal. “Hello,” she said. She looked like somebody\u2019s grandma.<\/p>\n
“Trick or treat!” I said.<\/p>\n
“Oh, do come in. You\u2019re the first trick-or-treaters I\u2019ve had all night. I was afraid no one was coming!” Her dog, a tiny little bundle of energy and enthusiasm, pressed his nose to the door and wagged his tail. “I\u2019m Mrs. Morgan. And you are\u2026?” She opened the door and we introduced ourselves. We stepped into a well-lighted foyer, where card tables were covered with little cups full of apple cider and plastic bags filled with homemade cookies. There were enough treats, there, for all the neighborhood kids.<\/p>\n
Mary and I looked at each other. How could we tell this sweet old lady that the other children wouldn\u2019t be coming? That the word on the street was, she was a mean old hag who liked to shoot kids and feed their bones to her dog? I bent down to pet the vicious mutt. He licked my hand.<\/p>\n
We couldn\u2019t do it. We drank some cider, took a bag or two of cookies, and told Mrs. Morgan we had to go \u2013 but that we\u2019d be back.<\/p>\n
After knocking some sense into Val and goading her into walking up to Mrs. Morgan\u2019s house for cookies, herself, the three of us made the rounds and told everyone that they\u2019d better go to the “witch\u2019s house” or be branded chickens and idiots for life. We showed them the cookies they\u2019d be missing if they didn\u2019t. We told them all about the nice old lady and her yappy little furball “guard dog.” I think we made her night.<\/p>\n
Mary and I became frequent visitors at Mrs. Morgan\u2019s house after that, bringing her flowers from our gardens: bright yellow branches of forsythia, fragrant purple lilacs, red and pink tulips, and the occasional sticky, ant-covered peony bouquet. She always seemed delighted to see us, and spent hours telling us about herself, her family, her dog, and the history of the little town we were growing up in. She had an old-fashioned crank telephone and lots of antiques. Her house was one of the original resort homes back around the turn of the century, when the whole village was a resort and amusement park.<\/p>\n
I finally confessed to my mom that I had befriended the woman everyone had said was a witch, despite worrying a little that my mom would be mad I\u2019d spent so much time talking to a “stranger.” She laughed, and told me she knew Mrs. Morgan \u2013 who, Mom said, seemed old back when she was a kid. The kids had called Mrs. Morgan a witch back then, too, and Mom was glad I\u2019d discovered the truth for myself.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Each year, on the last day of school, we were told who our teacher would be the following year. I was delighted to be moving on to Second Grade, but terrified by the news that my teacher would be Mrs. Hansen.<\/p>\n