Happy Nightmare

Are you playing, working, or meditating?

The game started at Sandy beach near the end of the summer. Katie had been calling the bridge at the start of the City Creek trail the Troll bridge, so I decided to be the troll. I crawled under the bridge, balancing on boulders on all-fours, the creek rushing around and under me, and waited for the thud of small boots above me, to say, “Aaarr, I’m the bridge troll!” Sending the skoggies screaming down the trail. The next time, I climbed over the side of the bridge and clawed at their ankles.

Then I climbed up the side of the little shack built onto the bridge, since they’d said, “Can’t get us in here!”

I moved to a different spot under the bridge, dodging dog poop that’d fallen through the cracks (what kind of dog poops on a footbridge?)

I went to another bridge where it would be harder for the kids to see me as they approached on the trail. I waited there for a while, so patiently that a family of tourists passed over me none the wiser. I whisper giggled, then felt a little weird there.

So I climbed out and snuck behind a tree and waited there for a minute, grinning at my plainly visible shadow falling on the trail as skoggies approached. But what they saw first was my yellow backpack sticking out from behind the other side of the tree.

“We see you Mr. Jake!” they said, cackling, but sill approaching. Children yearn for the mines, and they also yearn to be scared. I chased them back and forth across the bridges, bouncing on the troll bridge, since it’s basically two diving boards made of logs that meet over the middle of the creek. My blind dog hates that bridge. But I sprinted over it after the kids, and got it bouncing which got them to stop and stick their arms straight out from their sides for a moment before I could catch them.

When I’d almost got them (not on the railingless bridge), I gave a kind of shriek, “Ululululu!” and grinned at watching them kick it into high gear. But I worried a little about truly scaring them. So when I caught them, I just gave them a gentle tap on the top of the head and said, “boop.”

I crouched after them through the tall beach grass, circling around to the trailhead, then when they saw me I doubled back to catch them running on the trail by the bridge again.

I jumped the creek in a bound to enjoy the surprise on their faces that I could do it. But a minute later I realized I’d misplaced my radio. I figured it had fallen off when I jumped the creek, so I went back and looked around, and in the creek. It was just me and a couple high schoolers as mentors that day, so I somewhat sheepishly told them I’d lost my radio. They helped me look for it, asking, “Where was the last time you saw it?”

“Well, it might have been when I jumped over the creek on the beach. Or when I was crawling under the bridge. Or when I was crawling under the other bridge. Or when I jumped off that stump out from behind that tree.”

The high schoolers shook their heads at me and I grinned like a skoggy. Finally, I found it, just past the creek I’d jumped. Farther than I’d thought though. Seems it unclipped mid-air and took a bigger trajectory than me.

Back to the chase, where the skoggies had clustered at a thickly wooded part of the creek. One tried to escape by climbing a tree, so I climbed after them, on a horizontal alder, bending it closer to the ground the farther toward the top we shuffled, but it also got twiggier. Watching my feet more than my face, a twig jabbed me in the eye, and I felt it slide around the side of my eyeball behind my eyelid. I yelled and almost swore, and gave myself a time out. The twig left a red mark on the white of my eye for a few days, along with the feeling that something was in it, but not too much pain.

I watch my eyes a little more now, especially since it’s dark for most of our time after school. Running through the trees and tall grass and muskeg and beach sand, I still get a thrill at the fast finding of foot placements on wild terrain. The other week, as I preloaded to jump a muskeg hole, I hit a soft spot, and landed right in the middle, with a falsetto scream and cackle and both my boots filling with muddy water as I flopped forward and crawled out on my knees. I grinned pausing to dump my boots, asking, “Anyone thirsty?”

Our light vests and headlamps make it harder to hide though. I’ve accepted a new method of hiding, where if the kids stay perfectly still then I can’t see them. A skoggy came up with that. Like I’m a T-Rex. I just stand in front of them and stare over their heads and sniff, then cough and gag. I don’t know why. Because they smell bad if they don’t move and I can’t see them but I can smell them but I’m deterred? Now they lie in the tall grass with their glowing vests and act like they’re invisible. And while I can’t hide either, I can disguise myself. I change the color of my light vest from time to time, then crouch and waddle run with the cadence of a skoggy, and have gotten surprisingly close to them before they know it’s me. Then I give an, “Ululululu!” and they scatter like sparks.

If they say they aren’t playing, I ask, “Are you working?”

If they say they aren’t working, I ask, “What else is there? Meditating?” Then I boop them anyways and run after another.

The kids asked what we should call the new game. I came up with “Troll Stroll,” or “Troll Patrol,” but they weren’t impressed by either. After a minute of deliberation, they came up with “Happy Nightmare.” And shortly after that, they had a song to go along with it. “Happy, Happy Nightmare, it’s Happy Happy Nightmare.” So that’s what stuck.

On our walk from the school, I’ve started asking the kids to check in with what they’re feeling in their bodies and brains. The first most popular answer is, “Bored,” and a close second is, “Like I want to play Happy Nightmare.” So we play Happy Nightmare for fifteen twenty minutes before we do the sit spot, then they don’t complain about the sit spot.

I get my steps in. I come home drenched in sweat, almost as bad as when I was coaching middle school wrestling.

And I remember how easy it is to play. You don’t need much gear. Less rules. Even less self-consciousness. Cardio helps though.