Lights Out, Everybody
(with apologies to Arch Oboler)

By Tom Brennan

As a child, I can remember trick or treating on Halloween. It was great fun! Unfortunately, it is no longer safe for kids to do that today, at least not around neighborhoods. The Halloween scares were fairly new when I was a child. I can remember hospitals setting up equipment for people to bring in the candy to have it x-rayed to detect glass, razor blades, and other nasty things.

I tend to suspect, for the most part, that the x-raying of the candy did more harm to the kids than anything in the candy. This, too, was not always the case and trick or treat has pretty much become a thing of the past just as x-rays of your feet to see if your shoes fit properly are no longer in shoe stores.

College students are rather a different lot. Halloween has always been a great excuse to party for them and trick or treating was something that was done on campuses around the country. This practice has pretty much stopped, except in the dorms. However, those of us who were in college in the 1970s found new and interesting ways to celebrate the occasion.

The year I had my eyes taken out was not a particularly good one for me. A number of things happened to make it a year worth forgetting. By Halloween, I was ready for some fun being back at college and my new eyes provided me with a great vehicle for that, sort of...

I was involved with a Methodist student group on campus. We had decided to have a really big Halloween party. Our group included about forty active members so we had more than enough regulars to pull off a good party and the blessing of the director of the Methodist Student Center so there was even money for party stuff.

On the night of the party, some folks showed up in costume, but most didn't. We were nearing the mid point of the semester and all just wanted to have a good time. There were decorations everywhere, lots of food and drink, and everyone was in high spirits. Some of our music was recorded but from time to time, one of us would get a group together and do live music for a while. We had decided that none of us would be expected to provide music throughout the whole party, since that would make partying for the musicians impossible.

This was just fine with me since I didn't want to spend the entire evening playing my twelve-string guitar -- it would have spoiled my fun! Earlier that day, I had gathered the equipment I needed for my Halloween surprise. At Radio Shack, I got a red micro-light, a micro-light switch, some very thin wire, some batteries and a holder for them.

At home, I found my conformers. Conformers are shells used to hold the eye socket in shape after an eye has been removed so that the socket heals correctly. There are two types... One is a clear shell a bit smaller than the eye itself will be. This is not the one I wanted.

The other is quite a bit larger (18mm or so) and is made of silicon. It is rubbery and tends to bounce a little when dropped. It looks pretty strange. It is used when muscle spasms prevent using the smaller clear conformers. Since it is flexible, it does not pop out quite so easily. The larger size helps keep it in place. This was exactly what I wanted.

I was ready to put on my costume. The little holder for the batteries would make a good battery pack and would provide my costume's power. My friends had seen me with a "white eye" often enough and the oddness of it wouldn't make any difference to anyone. After all, I had my prosthetic eye for the other socket.

What follows is not something that I recommend to anyone to do. It can cause infections and/or damage to one's eye socket. Since breaking the tissue in an eye socket directly exposes the brain to air, this can be a very serious problem.

At this time of my life, I had a full beard and long hair reaching halfway down my back. This worked to my advantage. I connected the battery, switch, and light in series. Next, I put the battery in my pocket and the switch under my shirt where I could push it with my elbow.

I ran the wires under my shirt and up from behind under my hair over my ear to my face. I had had the clerk at Radio Shack find me some wire coated in a color that was not too obvious. This was necessary because the wire had to cross my face to the outside corner of my eye.

Silicon conformers are, as I have said, large. Since they are rubbery, they could form a suction and stick to one's eye socket. To prevent this, there are two small holes drilled through them to allow air under them and to prevent forming a suction, which is mostly successful. I carefully worked the micro light into one of these holes and put the conformer in my eye socket.

It was a little uncomfortable and the wire coming out of the corner of my eye was particularly irritating. It was a little like having a piece of sand in there but I thought I could probably live with the discomfort for a while. The hole the light was mounted in was to the outside of center by about a quarter the diameter of my eye, but I doubted that would make any difference for what I had in mind. My hair would cover the wire on my face and I would wait until I could find a dark place to do my stuff so I felt my costume was ready to go.

I suppose that being involved with the group of students at this party qualifies as what Maslow called a peak experience. It was certainly one of the high points of my undergraduate years. This basically meant that I had a lot of friends (both male and female) in the group and this worked to my advantage.

Once I got to the party I sort of hung around and munched and drank for a while. I even played my twelve-string some. My eye was becoming irritated but people knew I had had a good bit of trouble with my eyes since having them out (how is that possible??) so my rubbing it and such didn't attract any particular attention.

A couple hours in to the party, some male friends went outside with me so I could demonstrate my surprise...partly to see if it worked, and partly because I just had to tell someone about it. They all thought that it was great and agreed to help me set folks up to use it on them.

When we went back in, someone turned the lights way down and couples split off and started to dance and do the kinds of things that couples do in dark rooms at parties. I found myself a female to spend a little time with and we found ourselves an unoccupied corner. My friends had specifically arranged this corner for me and it proved quite adequate to my task.

When we got off in the corner, we got cuddled up on a love seat. We talked quietly for a while and one thing led to another. Eventually, I had my arm around her. This particular corner was darker than most. This is what made it work so well for my surprise. As we cuddled, I leaned toward her to kiss her and just as our noses were about to touch, I pushed that switch under my shirt.

What a spectacular reaction!! The red light in my eye came on and was fairly bright. It was bright enough that it would have been visible even though closed eyes, I think. The girl sat stunned for a minute and then screamed and ran out the front door screaming about the devil.

There were three rooms at the Student Center. My friends had arranged things so that most of the females were in the back room and I was in the front and not everyone saw my prank when I played it. This arrangement allowed me to repeat it several times. After I would "light up someone's life", they would be hustled out the front door by one of my friends where they would either kept outside, or would agree not to tell what was going on.

I managed to pull off my lighted-eye trick many times that night. I got slapped several times and some people ran away. A biology major actually calmly sat there and asked if she might be allowed to take a scraping from that "amazing eye stuff" to see what caused the light.

All good things must come to an end...and this one did rather abruptly. The last girl on whom I pulled this trick was a physical education major. She was several inches taller than me and quite a bit stronger. She was also a good friend and someone I actually had wanted to date for awhile.

When Jan came over and asked if I wanted to dance or talk or something, I was really getting in to the spirit of my little trick. We talked for a while but my eye was becoming so irritated that I knew that I would have to take off my costume soon. When we got face to face, I almost didn't trigger my light because I was so interested in Jan.

To this day, I still don't know if someone had told her about my light. When I triggered it, she calmly stood up, picked me up, threw me over her shoulder and trotted out the front door. She carried me to the back of the center where there happened to be a water hose. She dumped me on the ground and soaked me with it. I couldn't get away because she was sitting on me. When some of the other girls who had been victims of my prank saw her, they joined her in holding me down. Needless to say, that was the end of my prank!

This story does have a happy ending. I did get several dates with Jan and we are still friends to this day. On the down side, my eye socket was sore for a week but it was well worth it to have been able to pull off a different kind of trick on the Halloween of a bad year and get a life long friend, to boot.

Tom Brennan, CCC-A/SLP, RHD
Web page: http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
Web master http://titan.sfasu.edu/~f_freemanfj/speechscience.html
Web master http://titan.sfasu.edu/~f_freemanfj/fluency.html