Bachelor Grove
A Halloween I'll Never Forget
Sitting on the front porch, handing out candy to the little ghouls and hobgoblins as they walked up our front walk, I quickly thought back to the scariest Halloween of my life. It was ten years ago this very night, a night I will never forget and one that changed my life forever.
Angela Woolsey was always somewhat of a tease. We had dated a couple of times during our sophomore year of high school, but that was it. Nothing ever came of it, and after our third date ended with little more than a goodnight kiss, I gave up on her. All hat--no cattle, as my grandfather would have said.
For better or worse, her family moved away the summer after our sophomore year, and I never heard from her again. The story was that they moved to Chicago or someplace up that way. And you could say we both moved on.
I was fortunate enough to get an internship with the Chicago Board of Trade during the fall semester of my senior year of college. It didn't pay anything; my folks agreed to pay my living expenses. But what an opportunity! I was truly honored to have been selected.
For housing, I was put up at one of the Northwestern University dorms, and as I probably never would have been accepted as an undergrad at Northwestern, living in the dorm and taking a few business courses at one of the most prestigious universities in the Midwest was an honor enough. My internship was from seven in the morning until noon daily, followed by a lecture class Monday through Thursday. By late October, the excitement of the whole thing was beginning to wear off, and I was actually getting bored on the weekends. Oh, the work part of my day was the most exciting thing I have ever done. And I guess that's why I was so bored after I left the CBOT on Friday afternoons.
Sitting at a deep-dish pizza place not far from campus, I realized that the coming Friday was Halloween. As a kid, I always loved a night of Trick or Treating, and being alone in a city the size of Chicago was totally depressing. Then it hit me. Hey, hadn't Angela Woolsey moved to Chicago? I picked up my phone and started surfing for her. The best I could come up with was a Facebook account for someone by that name who lived in the Chicagoland area. Finishing my pizza and with a second beer in hand, I IM'd her. "Hi," I typed, "if this is the Angela Woolsey who attended Remington High School in Denver, this is Brad Holloman."
I put my phone down and picked up my beer. But before I could even swallow my first sip, my phone dinged. "Oh my God, tell me this isn't spam or something." I don't know how she typed a response that fast, and it didn't even look like there were any typos.