When Halloween night came around, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my 12-foot-tall naked 3D-printed purple statue of Buddy Hield. My first inclination was to have him hide in the kitchen or something so that none of the trick-or-treaters would see him and call the police and have him taken away for murdering that guy that one time. But then it occurred to me that Halloween is like the one time of year where a gigantic scary statue is not entirely out of the ordinary. Sure, he’s a bit bigger than the average person’s Halloween decorations, but nobody would think twice about him. Plus, he would scare the crap out of little kids with his immensity.
So the new plan was for him to hide behind the door of my place, and when the greedy kids show up to take away the candy that I bought with my own money, he would pop out and spook them real good. Buddy’s big compared to regular humans, but compared to an eight-year-old he’s gigantic. Like, big enough where the kid might be reasonably fearing for their life. Which they should. After all, Buddy has shown that he can kill people if it is necessary for his or my safety.
I explained the plan to Buddy and he understood it. He thought it was hilarious, he couldn’t stop giggling while sitting there against the wall next to the door. The first girl who showed up, I started giving her a piece of candy (I can’t believe we train our kids to be dependent on the welfare state) and then Buddy hopped out waving his arms to scare her.
It worked so well that the girl stared at him for a few seconds in shock, then started crying. Her parents apologized and took the piece of candy for her and put it in her candy bucket since she was too busy crying to do it herself. Meanwhile, I could tell Buddy was sad that he had made her cry. He thought it would just be a funny joke to scare the kids. He had stopped waving his arms and just kind of watched her go away with her parents.
Once I closed the door, Buddy started crying too. It’s a good thing he didn’t do that while her parents were there because human adults are definitely smart enough to realize that a gigantic plastic statue of Buddy Hield is incapable of tears, and then they might have gotten suspicious and alerted authorities.
I should clear that up. Buddy is in fact incapable of tears because he has no tear ducts (he’s made out of plastic), but he is fully capable of crying. It’s just that no tears come out. He was sitting there sobbing with his big plastic face covered by his big plastic hands. I had to ignore the doorbell the next few times it rang because he was so distraught, and every time it rang he just got sadder because he couldn’t do his job.
So that’s how Halloween went. I told him that other humans don’t understand him but that I love him and that he’s my best friend and that he did great scaring that girl. Eventually he stopped crying and I just continued handing out candy like normal without any special spooks.
This was like the first time that Buddy showed empathy for a human being that wasn’t me, which is good, because it means that he’s not just a cold-blooded human killer who will, without hesitation, kill any human that’s not me. He’s my best friend.