I live in a stereotypical  Small Townâ˘. Everyone knows (or at least recognizes) everyone else, we smile and say hello to each other as we walk by, and we call our downtown area The Village Beautiful (no joke). As a teacher, I canât go to the store without running into at least one parent of a student Iâve taught or am currently teaching, and I often run into my students biking or walking around with their friends when Iâm out for a run. Itâs a great place.
Along with all the craft fairs and bake sales that are hosted throughout the year by various churches and schools, my town also holds an annual holiday walk at the beginning of December. For those of you who donât know what a holiday walk is, itâs basically a collection of winter themed events taking place on a main street in town throughout a day (or eveningâsome areas call it First Night). Thereâs usually caroling, cookie decorating, free cocoa, and so on. My particular townâs Holiday Walk starts with a 5k in the morning, and then progresses into the kidsâ crafts, a few charity raffles, some food related events, and then finishes up with a costumed dog parade, and a reading of A Christmas Carol at one of the local restaurants. Itâs always a good time.
This year, my mother drove up to go to the walk with me. As you may suspect, the dog parade is the highlight of the day. So, after puttering around the raffles in the early afternoon and checking out a soup tasting, we found our spot on the sidewalk and waited for the parade to begin. The dogs, as always, were magnificent. They were dressed up in ribbons, as elves, in reindeer antlers and in yarmulkes. My personal favorites were a St. Bernard pulling a small wheeled sleigh and a tiny Chihuahua dressed as Santa. However, our dog parade is all inclusive. So, along with the dogs were also a few miniature horses from the local farms, the school marching band, the local veterans, and Santa on a firetruck bringing up the rear. Â Â
During the parade, itâs not unusual for the people marching to hand out candy or plastic necklaces to people watching from the sidewalk. So, sometime around half way through the parade, one of the kids marching with her dog handed me a candy cane.
Iâm not a big fan of candy canes, but I didnât want to refuse it or throw it away, so I ended up carrying it around the rest of the time we were at the walk. When I got home that afternoon, I put the candy cane in my friend/neighborâs mailbox, thinking it would be a nice gesture for her to come home to. Then my mother and I went up to my apartment and hung out for a bit before she went home.
Around six that evening, I got a text from my friend asking, âDid you get a candy cane in your mailbox?â
Now, I had honestly thought it would be obvious that the candy cane was from me. We live in an old house that has been renovated into three apartments, we donât talk much with our third neighbor (although sheâs very nice), and our mailboxes are at the back of the house. None of our other friends live nearby either, so who else could it possibly have been?
Assuming that my friend would figure it out in a minute, I responded. âNope.â
She said sheâd ask our other neighbor if she got one. (Obviously she hadnât.)
At this point, I decided to wait and see how long it would take for my friend to figure out the candy cane was from me. She had gone into full investigation mode, and was giving me updates. None of her other friends knew anything about the candy cane. Could it have been the mailman? But if that was the case, why was she the only one who had got one? Occasionally she would ask me another question. âWho could have left me a candy cane?!â My answers were always vague. I was probably enjoying this way too much.
An hour or two later when she still hadnât figured it out, I decided to put her out of her misery.
âI have NO clue where it could have come from!!â she texted.
âYou havenât asked me the right question yet.â
I immediately received a snap with a very suspicious look on her face which read, âWhat question is that?â
âYou havenât asked, âDid YOU leave a candy cane in my mailbox,â yet.â
Her only response: âI hate you.â
The weeks went by. We shared the candy cane story with everyone. It became the go-to cocktail party story at the various gatherings we went to, and my friend gave me a hard time about it at every chance she got. I let her because it was only fair. Â
On the last day of school before break, one of my students gifted me a candy cane. I knew what I had to do. It went right into my friendâs mailbox. There was no response.
The next day, I went out to get my mail only to find a candy cane sticking out of my own box. That was only the start though. Sometime in the night, my friend had filled the whole box with candy canes, a fact which I discovered when I opened it.
âIs that a whole box of candy canes?â I texted.
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I brought a bunch of fake plastic spiders to work because our wonderful hr ladies didn't put any up in the fake cobwebs decorating the breakroom and they NEEDED spiders so I put some in my pocket and I was like "hey I have a cool idea I'll give some to my co-workers" so that morning I took one and asked my friend to hold out his hand and he did so I dropped a plastic spider in it. Before this moment I didnt even stop to consider this could be an unpleasant experience for some, I genuinely was like "people like tiny plastic toys and such and it is Halloween month after all" but I forget that, arguably, most people are afraid of spiders. He jumped back in fear and glared at me in passing for the rest of the day.
Even after doing this I still did it to like 4 other co-workers and only one was delighted by it, then he asked for a few more to give to his kid who likes bugs.
Byleth frowns at his reaction and looks down at the cookies. They look fine, so why...
Oh!
âOh, uh... oops...â She mutters, swiftly hiding the box behind her back. Is she blushing? Its hard to tell... âI think I grabbed the wrong batch...â
Her first attempt had ended in disaster as she had accidentally used salt instead of sugar. But hadnât they thrown that batch out...?
There was this time in middle school when my grade was doing a field trip to a sleepaway camp in the woods and everyone was scared of killer clowns like it was all anyone talked about and when it was getting dark I took a route through the woods to get to my cabin and deadass heard someone scream âTHEREâS SOMEONE IN THE WOODSâ and someone else yelled âITS A CLOWNâ loud enough to hear from the woods and that was my most successful scare prank ever
