First Annual Christmas Masqerade Ball

It was just supposed to be a for fun, nothing bad was supposed to happen. The boys who lived next door were always competing to see who could do the craziest thing.

One typical Friday night, we were up in the tree house in my backyard talking about nothing, when Jake, the oldest boy, jumped up and said, “let’s do something crazy tonight!”

At that suggestion, Max, Jake’s younger brother, and I just rolled our eyes and replied in unison, “not this again.” with a big sigh.

We go through this every Friday night because there is nothing to do in this small town. The diner is always crowded on Friday night with couples going on their weekly dates, the movie theater closed permanently about five years ago and we don’t even have a Wal-mart to walk around.

As usual Max asked Jake what kind of crazy thing he wanted to do this time and Jake excitedly exclaimed that it would be easier just to show us. At that, Jake slide down the ladder and ran off towards town yelling for Max to bring his book bag as he disappeared into the distance.

Max and I got up, climbed down the ladder grabbed the book bag that was laying at the base of the tree and then off to find Jake.

When we arrived in town, we couldn’t find Jake anywhere but, strangely enough, the town square was filled with people. It was cold out and the full moon was shining high above the town. As we wandered around, we discovered that the city was holding its first ever “Christmas Masquerade Ball”. We hadn’t been invited because we are only 13 year old kids but we didn’t care.

As we were walking by the stage that had been set up for the band, Max was suddenly pulled under the stage, almost hitting his head on the low crossbeam in the center of the stage. It was Jake who had pulled him under the stage and he had that stupid grin on his face that he always gets before he does something dumb.

Jake took Max’s book bag and unzipped it. He proceeded to dump the contents of it on the ground in front of us. There were a few books, some pens and crumpled papers, a water bottle and two bottles of baby powder from their parents’ shop.

Jake’s grin widened.

I asked, “what are you going to do with that stuff?”

Jake began to explain his master plan and after a few minutes Max and I were in, as always.

It was the first annual Christmas Masquerade Ball and even though it is always freezing this time of year, it never snowed. Jake had the brilliant idea, sarcastically speaking, to give these people something to remember from the first Christmas Ball. Jake wanted to make it snow.

Since none of us were able to control the weather, we decided we would improvise. The boys’ parents owned a baby and kids supply shop and they had boxes and boxes of baby powder in the store room and Jake had borrowed his father’s key.

We went to the store room and grabbed the boxes and Max went to the office to grab a few spares that were stored there as samples. The labels were all removed from the sample bottles so that people could try the product and not the name but they still contained the same white looking powder.

We set to work rigging the blankets that had been hung to set the mood over the dance floor so that we could control the snow from a distance.

At one minute till midnight, the band announced that this would be their last slow long for the night and that was our cue. We went over to our rig and as the clock struck midnight, it began to snow.

All of the dancing couples were in awe of the beautiful unexpected dusting of snow, they continued to smile and dance slowly in each others’ arms.

Then all of a sudden, one of the men dancing started squirming and wiggling around like he was trying to dance the jitter bug. Not long after that, his partner joined him, and the couple beside them and before we knew it, everyone on the dance from was jumping around and going crazy. The band thought they were tired of slow songs so they kicked the music up a few notches until the lead singer noticed that no one was actually dancing to the correct rhythm.

Me and the boys were also very confused as we stood there looking on at the crazy couples. We soon realized that they weren’t dancing at all, they were scratching. Everyone was scratching, everywhere! Some people were even using the long decorative candy canes to scratch at their backs.

The boys and I were terrified but we didn’t think that we had anything to do with it. We tiptoed hurriedly out of our hiding spot and ran home, back to the tree house and laid down and continued talking about nothing.

My dad came out soon after we arrived and told us it was time for bed, so the boys went home and I went inside.

It wasn’t until the next day when my dad brought in the newspaper that I saw the headline:

“First Annual Christmas Masquerade Ball: An Evening of Fun, Dancing and Itching Powder”

Max and I later discovered that it was Jake who put the itching powder in the mix. He switched out the sample bottles in the office, knowing Max would run in and get them. To this day, we still go alone with Jake’s crazy idea and everyone remembers the first Christmas Masquerade Ball.