The James Logan Courier

By Jericho Faustino, Courier Staff Writer

I can still remember the sticky paint dripping off my forehead. It was during the week of Halloween ’08, and I volunteered at spooky house at the Fremont Hub. I thought that I would be dressed up as a monster and scare people in a legit haunted house, the kinds with trap doors, crazy mazes, and people hiding behind every corner. When I got to the Fremont Hub, there is a little house where I was to work at. My initial thought was, “Hey I’m going to run around scaring people and have a blast! These five hours are going to be a breeze.”

Students like me will do whatever they need to get they need to get the 20 hours of community service hours required to graduate. They can gain community hours by helping teachers out after schools, doing volunteer work at hospitals, or in my case, spend five hours in a booth with make up and a little fan that doesn’t even work.

I was to be dressed up as a scary hotel worker. The make up artist made me wear these incredibly itchy face paint and this uncomfortably warm vest and undershirt. The whole “house” was a dark hallway with booths on both sides. I had my own little booth, complete with a chair, a desk and a fan to keep me cool. It would have been great if my fan actually worked. My only line was, “Today’s special is eyeballs or whatever”, and I forgot the rest because after saying it for 120 minutes straight, I decided to make my own lines.

To make my five hours more enjoyable, I pulled out my iPod and instead of saying, “Today’s special is…” I chose to hide in a corner of my booth where people couldn’t see me, and scare anyone brave enough to cross the “haunted hotel worker”. When a person would pass by, I would let out the most gruesome scream I can make, and scare the hell out them, except I wasn’t allowed to scare little children. So, I carried on with my little role as a scary hotel worker, but my philosophy was, if a child is old enough to walk on their own, they’re fair game. I scared men, women and children. No one was safe from this hotel worker. I started screaming out random things just to pass time.

I remember scaring some James Logan cheerleaders. Man, did I get an earful when I came back to school: “Jericho, you’re an ass!”

I had some cheap laughs, but overall, a waste of five hours. When I was done with my community service, I ended up five hours richer. I appreciate the five hours of community service credit, but the people in charge could’ve set me up with a few more hours, I mean, I was a freaking hotel worker steaming in a pot of my own sweat and paint for five hours, and my fan didn’t even work.