10-29-2002

Has anybody actually seen the original Frankenstein movie? We all know the story: Boris Karloff is a big green scary monster who terrorizes the village and kills thousands of people, destroys the K-Mart and climbs the Empire State Building while fondling Madeleine Kahn, etc. etc.

Except that the movie isn’t really like that at all. In the original movie, the Karloff character is portrayed rather sympathetically. He’s really a nice guy; just misunderstood. It’s the villagers who are terrifying. They’re just a bunch of idiots who go on a rampage because, well, they’re idiots.

And the monster isn’t green. The movie was filmed in black and white, after all. And “Frankenstein” is the name of the scientist, not the creature. (I think the monster’s name was actually Herbert).

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that it is nearly Halloween – the time to celebrate the weird and otherworldly. And when I think of Halloween, my thoughts do occasionally turn toward the works of Shelly. No, I’m not talking about Mary Shelley, the writer who created the story of Frankenstein…I’m talking about Maynard Shelly, the KU professor who created one of the most bizarre university classes that a student could possibly hope to encounter.

The course was called “The Psychology of Satisfaction”. There was a 2-semester waiting list to get in, due to the class’s enormous popularity. It was widely recognized as an “easy A”, and I was fortunate enough to get in.

Professor Shelly was weird. While it seemed that my Calculus instructor was weird due to parental issues from his Freudian nightmare of a childhood, it seemed that Shelly was weird in a premeditated and calculated way. Many students speculated that the class and its students were simply part of a grand experiment he was conducting. We expected to see a book result from it; possibly called “How to Create an Academically Worthless, Yet Extremely Popular Class” or “How to Get Paid a Professor’s Salary Without Designing Any Course Materials At All”.

Grades were based on a point system. You needed 1000 points for an “A”, 900 for a “B”, and so on. Points were distributed according to Shelly’s whim. On Veteran’s Day, he gave 50 points to anyone who would click their heels together and salute. When it snowed, you could earn 75 points for bringing a snowball into the classroom. An extra 50 points could be had by anyone willing to “climb to a high place” and write a paragraph about the experience.

The high point of the class was “Weird Thursday”, where any student could receive 50 to 100 points for standing up in class and telling a weird story. It was odd, considering that he has helped write several Christian-themed books, but Professor Shelly specifically wanted to hear stories of occult experiences. If you’ve seen a ghost, you get points. If you’ve successfully predicted the future, you get points. Double points for 360° head rotation or projectile vomiting.

We had one guy in the class who was a white Bill Cosby when it came to storytelling. He had us rolling in the aisles with a story about a Halloween candy scam he perpetrated. He built a T-shaped frame from 2 x 4s, put it on roller skates, and covered it with a sheet. Draping a candy bag over one “arm” and dragging it along by the other, he went door to door telling folks that his “little brother” was very shy and wouldn’t speak loud enough for his “Trick or Treat” to be heard. Folks felt sorry for the shy kid and gave him even more candy than they would’ve given a real little boy. Whether true or not, it made for a good story.

Usually, my siblings and I didn’t want our family to hand out much Halloween candy. Anything left when the porch light turned off was fair game – so we wanted a lot to be left over. But one year the local IGA had a sale on Zagnut bars. I couldn’t resist sampling one a little bit early – and discovered why they’d been on sale. I suspect that Zagnuts aren’t very good even when fresh, but these had obviously been sitting in the back of a fish market truck since the early Cretaceous. They were poison! I spit out my sample and vowed that we’d give away every single one of those insults to fine snacking.

Before the hobgoblins started to arrive, I had a quick talk with my sister and informed her of my plan. My brother and I then took all the candy and climbed up onto the roof of the house. When kids came to the door, my sister would instruct them to hold out their bags so she could put the candy in. She would receive puzzled looks, of course, since she never even opened the screen door. But in a moment, they’d each hear the satisfying “thunks” of multiple Zagnuts landing in their bag.

I think we seriously freaked some kids out. And since it’s not that easy to aim precisely when you’re lying prone on splintery shingles and hurling non-aerodynamic candy bars while simultaneously trying to remain absolutely silent as you resist gravity’s attempts to use your carcass to flatten the juniper bushes – well, we did manage to paste a few of the kids squarely on the noggin.

I’ll bet some of those kids are still traumatized today. If they hear the words “Trick or Treat”, they’ll fling themselves flat, cover their heads with their hands, and yell “Incoming Zagnuts!”

They’re probably all college professors now, handing out points on “Weird Thursdays”.

Halloween Trivia:

1. What was Boris Karloff’s real name?
A. Boris Badenov
B. Marion Michael Morrison
C. William Henry Pratt
D. Manfred von Richtofven

2. What was Mary Shelley’s middle name?
A. Wollstonecraft
B. Tuiasosopo
C. van den Hoogenband
D. Ichiro

3. Frankenstein’s monster was afraid of:
A. Piranhas
B. Fire
C. Nuclear winter
D. Siegfried and Roy

(Answers below)





















Answers: 1-C, 2-A, 3-B