Halloween at Hogwarts

C., home from the train station, reports that the school has been in an uproar, due to today being “Initiation into the Bloods Day” or some such.

Initiation into the Bloods, C. tells me, requires candidates for gang membership to run up to perfect strangers on the street and slice open their faces with a knife, starting just below the ear lobe and carving down to the corner of the mouth.

Plus which, “Nine women were raped in Queens!”

“9 women were raped in Queens?” I said.

“Yeah, or Brooklyn.”

Everyone was scared, C. reported, and the boys had all planned to run to the train station after school instead of walking as they normally do. In the event, however, C. and his friend chose to walk, mostly because C’s other friend, an Irish boy from a semi-rough neck of the woods, told him the Bloods business was all a bunch of cr**. On the strength of that opinion, C. opted to walk, and lived to tell the tale. Good news!

Still and all, C., as soon as he got home, was off to consult Christian (hometown: Yonkers) on the matter of Bloods initiation rites and the 9 women raped in Brooklyn or Queens. Unfortunately, Christian is out with M., trying to take Jimmy to his program, and they’re stranded in Greenburgh because nobody’s there. Ed is dealing with that.

So we all await word on the Bloods and the fate of Jimmy’s program.

On the train home, C. sat across from 3 Irvington moms who were chatting about their kids’ YouTube videos and also about Village plans for the police to scare everyone straight. On Halloween, Irvington kids on Main Street get rowdy with shaving cream, and Irvington police always have the situation well in hand. That's what makes it exciting, really: knowing the kids and the police will both be there, along with the moms and dads escorting their smaller children to people's houses, knowing that the older kids will get rowdy and the police will prevail.

I know this because I spend every Halloween night in downtown Irvington with my friend P. Last year’s excitement was the news that J. had been picked up by the police and taken home in the back seat of the police car. A likely tale, I thought, but since half the kids in town claimed actually to have seen J. riding in the back seat of the police car, who was I to argue?

We found out the next day that J.’s parents hadn't let him go out for Halloween, so I was right after all.


update

M. and Christian are back sans Jimmy, so the program must be happening.

re: the Bloods, Christian had this to say: "Oh, you heard about that? They said the same thing at my job, too. Supposedly the Bloods are going to be slashing 38 people tonight for initiation. 'Cause New York gangs suck."

On that note, Happy Halloween!