Career Day

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Susan said as she slammed the car door shut. “If you traumatize these kids, I’ll haunt you, singing ‘Henry the Eighth’ for all eternity!”

“No worries, my dear child” her grandfather said in his deep, echoing voice and then chuckled quietly to himself.

From any normal grandfather, that would have been reassuring, even endearing. But when your grandfather is a seven-foot-tall walking, talking skeleton wrapped in a black robe and using a 9-foot scythe as a walking stick, people tend to point, stare and run away screaming. But then, that’s just something you get used to when your grandfather’s the Grim Reaper.

“Jake owes me the biggest apology in history when he gets back,” she muttered.

“My dear Susie, stop your fretting!” her grandfather said. “I am perfectly capable of conducting myself properly around children. I am more than happy to assist you with this Career Day presentation.”

“Stop calling me Susie, Gramps! Let’s just get inside and get this over with.”

The swarming hallways inside the school suddenly became still and silent as the tall, ghastly figure lowered his scythe and stooped his head to walk in the door. Children, parents and teachers shrank back toward the walls as the pair silently made their way to the classroom.

“They certainly are a skittish lot,” the Reaper said as he bent forward to walk in the door.

“What do you expect? They just watched a teacher and the Grim Reaper walk into their school.” Susan said as she grabbed a dry-erase marker from her desk.

She walked to the front of the room and wrote the words “Career Day” in huge letters in the middle of the board as the students shuffled in. They gave the Reaper a wide berth and exchanged frightened whispers as they took their seats. One little girl with short red hair, oblivious to what was happening, walked in with her eyes fixed on her favorite book. She walked straight into the Reaper’s side, looked up, turned pale and began to whimper and sob.

“Why hello, little one!” the Reaper said. He gave her his most charming grin and bent down to pat her on the head. The trembling girl shrieked as she saw a monstrous skeleton leaning forward, his hand stretched out to grab her by the hair.

“GRAMPS!” Susan yelled and pulled the girl away. “It’s OK, Sally. Why don’t you go sit in the reading corner and calm down? Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

She looked up at the rest of the class. The students were staring at her grandfather in horror. Some were ghostly white. Some were flushed in fear. One little boy was slowly turning green.

“Class, remember how I said I had a special person I wanted you to meet today?” Susan asked. “Well, my boyfriend, Jake couldn’t make it for Career Day, so I brought someone even more special for you to meet. This is my Grandfather Mortimer, and he is the Grim Reaper.”

“Miss Dead, my mommy says the Grim Reaper isn’t real,” Melissa Collins, one of the little girls in the back, said. “She says he’s just a mythological character people made up in the Dark Ages to scare other people into being good.”

“Actually, children, my mythology goes a lot farther back than that,” Mortimer said in what he meant to be a jovial tone. But when Sally started sobbing in the reading corner, he decided to tone it down. “There have been stories about me in some of the earliest civilizations, going back into the dynasties of Pharaohs in Egypt and Emperors in China and Japan. But my job description is generally the same. I come and escort people’s spirits into eternity when they die.”

“Are you the devil?” a little boy with freckles on the front row asked.

“No, no, no,” Mortimer chuckled. “But I have met him. Nasty fellow. No table manners at all!”

“If you come get people when they die, does that mean we’re going to die right now?” the freckled boy asked.

“Well, not all of you….” Mortimer answered with another, more ominous chuckle. There was a collective gasp in the room and Susan glared at him. “My apologies. That was an attempt at a joke. My humor has a tendency toward the macabre. No one here will die today.”

All the children sighed and a few put their heads on their desks in relief.

“That old lady on the other side of the block, however…”

“GRAMPS!”

“My apologies, Susie.”

“Gramps….”

“Ah, yes. My apologies, SUSAN,” he said. Susan closed her eyes in exasperation when a little voice on the other side of the room whispered, “My grandma lives over there!”

“My, you are all such excitable children!” Mortimer said. He tried to grin, but since his face is always fixed in a skeleton’s grin, it was impossible for the children to tell. “Isn’t this supposed to be an enjoyable occasion? Come! Ask me an interesting question. Anything you like!”

“What’s the weirdest death you’ve ever seen?” the freckled boy asked.

“Oh, my. That’s a poser!” Mortimer leaned heavily on his scythe and scratched the side of his skull. “The most recent one was a man in a hotel room. He wouldn’t tell me what he was trying to accomplish, but I found him in his room closet with a rope tied around his….”

“Gramps, I don’t think they need to hear about that one,” Susan interrupted. “Why don’t you tell them about the fishermen with the dynamite?”

“Oh, thank you, Susan. These two fishermen down in Mississippi decided to go fishing, only instead of poles and lures, they took a case of beer and some dynamite. They drank about half their beer before they lit the first stick and threw it in. Unfortunately, they also brought a Labrador retriever with them. The dog retrieved the “stick” and they all made a trip with me afterwards.”

“Even the dog?” Melissa asked.

“No, the dog was unharmed,” he said. “He had dropped the dynamite at his owner’s feet and was on his way back to the water for a drink.”

“Those men must have been really stupid,” a boy with thin, blonde hair sitting in the front of the room laughed.

“Indeed, but they are much wiser now,” Mortimer said. “They learned a valuable lesson. Albeit, a bit late.”

“Why do you dress like that?” a girl halfway back in the third row asked.

“I find it makes the job easier. People expect to see me like this. It causes confusion if I come to collect them while wearing Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.”

Suddenly the door was flung open and a man in a business suit rushed in. He stopped short at the sight of Mortimer, then turned to Susan.

“Uh, sorry I’m late. I didn’t know you were going to get your grandfather to sub for me!”

“Brandon, my dear boy! How are you?”

“His name’s JAKE, Gramps,” Susan said and rolled her eyes.

“I’m fine, Mr. Dead. I just got out of an emergency planning meeting for the city. Sorry to hijack your presentation, but I think I should take it from here,” Jake said as he shook Mortimer’s hand.

“Glad you could make it, my boy! And it’s no trouble at all. If I wait much longer, I’ll be late for my appointment in the neighborhood.”

“Class, say goodbye to Mr. Mortimer,” Susan said and started pushing her grandfather towards the door.

“Goodbye, children! Have a wonderful day! I will see you all again!”