Halloween 17

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Halloween was honestly one of my favorite holidays. Now, I’m past the age of and trick or treating, but I would usually throw on a pair of cat ears or a wig and wander around with my family while the kids go door to door begging for sweets, and parading through town in their cute little costumes, with little plastic pumpkin shaped buckets in hand. This year was really not much different, aside from the fact that it was my first Halloween in Ohio. Temperatures were cooler than in Florida, so cold that the heavy wool coat and pair of retired marching band gloves I was wearing DIDNT really help much.
Now, my family has this tradition of handing out glow sticks to children who are out Trick or Treating, and I was helping them out. I had glow sticks hanging off my arms, pretty much a whole bag of them on each side. I was starting to regret it, because kids are picky and we all know that the little boy in the dinosaur costume HAS to have a blue one, and as fate has it, the most available blue glow stick is halfway down my arm. So here we go, trying to get it off as this kid pouts. Like DAMN, can you settle for neon green? Apparently not.
Anyways, as I’m trying to hand out glow sticks to all of these crazy children that seem to live picking the specific colors that are gonna be hardest to separate, a couple of my friends from school show up. Nadia, a small, blonde haired, pretty little flute player invites me to her house, and because it’s only like 29 degrees and my fingers are about to freeze off inside my tiny cotton gloves, I happily oblige.
Now, Nadia’s house is big. Family of eight, two cats, and (at the time), a large dog. Yet it’s literally full of people, it’s like there’s some sort of religious ceremony happening in the living room. Teenagers are huddled like penguins around the couch, and I question what the heck is happening that has half the neighborhood trying to see this couch. Has Jesus himself descended from the heavens and made himself at home on Nadia’s brown living room couch? Has Beyoncé decided to pay a visit to Plain City and picked this lovely place to stay during her travel to the most irrelevant and tiny Amish town in Ohio? Probably not. I ask my friend what’s going on.
“That’s my brother.” She explains. “Came home from the hospital yesterday.”
I push my way through the crowds to see this,, guy. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Wearing nothing but a pair of way too big sweatpants, hair tousled and slick with sweat. On the coffee table are several gifts and flowers and cards. He has surgical tape over the majority of his stomach.
Also I see him literally every day. He’s in marching band with me. Literally the drum major. Wow, I’m smart. I guess it’s kind of hard to tell when he’s like twice as pale as normal and looks like he hasn’t eaten anything in a week. Which lets be fair, he probably hasn’t.
So we start talking. He’s kinda quiet and tired and he’s telling me about how he spent five days suffering horrible stomach cramps, finally went to the emergency room, blah blah blah, appendicitis, blah blah, something about being mad about not being able to trick or treat.
I didn’t really know what to say, like, this dude just had a whole ass organ explode and now he’s missing Halloween. I don’t have a present on me. I don’t gave candy. I wouldn’t give him candy even if I did, partially because it’s mine, partially because he probably isn’t down to eat sweets.
So I just give him a pink glow stick, tell him that I’m sorry his appendix yeeted, and left.
Fast forward over a year later. His names Nia and we’re a couple. I still tease him about having to appendix. I love his dumbass