In talking to ChaplainMom tonight I realized I may have given the wrong impression last week. When I said that our costumes growing up were often original and/or homemade, I wasn’t implying that they were all particularly good.
Exhibit A:
In third grade I went as a Rubik’s Cube. (Why yes, I was a nerd, why do you ask?) Unfortunately, the only box we had on hand was not a perfect cube–the sides were smaller and rectangular. Only the front and back were square. Also, my cube was a solved cube–I mounted colored posterboard and drew a grid on each side. Another person went as a cube, but hers was perfectly square and unsolved. She won the costume contest that year, so I had all these people coming up to me saying, “Oh you won,” and I had to say, “No, it was the *other* Rubik’s Cube.”
Exhibit B:
When I was a little older, I had possession of this styrofoam mannequin head–I cannot imagine why. But I decided to dress up as a decapitated person. So I wore a huge shirt that I buttoned up over my head, and carried around this mannequin head. Two problems:
1. The tuft of brown hair that poked up the top, ruining the effect
2. I couldn’t frickin SEE!
Exhibit C:
In either 1978 or 1979, I went as Princess Leia. Mamala sewed me a white gown with hood, and I had long enough hair to do the buns. That was an awesome costume, despite the fact that my version of Leia had coke-bottle glasses. Anyway.
Some years later, we were casting about for a costume for my little brother to wear and we came across the robe. So we cut eye holes in the hood and had him wear it backwards as a ghost.
Yes, my baby brother wore a white gown.
With a hood.
With eye holes cut out of it.
Geez Louise.
I rest my case!
Perhaps my siblings will stop by and add their own evidence.
10 Responses to “a halloween clarification”
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My brother wore my Charleston dress from a tap dance recital, along with matching headband a la 20s flapper when he was 4. Nice.
I think he won a prize in local costume contest at the shopping mall that year, not only for the actual costume but for the aplomb he displayed while wearing it. (He is now the most conservative person in the family. But we knew him when . . .)
One year I was a toothbrush. Yes. A toothbrush.
The silver lining? It was poorly made and fell apart early in the evening.
Are there pictures of the Rubik’s cube?
We are in the process of permanently scarring our children:
Aaron is a bit tired of the candy corn thing.
Joseph is older (by 28 minutes) and shows a bit of aplomb in his candy corn-y outfit.
XT
I knew there had to be some major plusses to the relatively slow growth of the Halloween industry over here…It just didn’t happen when I was growing up, and even when my kids were of junior school age there was no expectation that deeply uncreative, needle-shy mothers might need to clothe them in exciting costumes. Thanks be to God!
Oh gosh, I’d better get back to knitting the tail for Lucy’s kitty-cat costume. Which is some black clothes with knitted tail and ears. And possibly some face paint whiskers.
Howlingly funny, RM!
haha
Yeah, I went as a Ghostbuster, which looked more like Electric Boogaloo meets Peter Venkman. But it was a great costume. Luke went as a ghost that year, as you mentioned. It did look very KKK-licious, but he did have a red circle with a slash through it that he wore over his costume, ala the Ghostbusters logo. So at best, he was slimer, at worst, a walking public service announcement against the KKK.
Although I’m sure that he tired of wearing the red circle/slash prop and walked the streets of West U as a raging racist.
And now, he’s an advocate for black women (and all women) in Houston, so there. Maybe we all need to get our racist, sexist, what-ever-ist tendencies out early, as youngsters on Halloween.
Not that he had any of those ever, for even just one day!
I once went as a stick of juicyfruit gum.
I have no idea why—I don’t even like juicyfruit.
I’m telling you, the family of homemade pumpkins (which made an appearance multiple years In.A.Row!) is the worst costume ever. You never outgrow it because there are three sizes. It was horrible. the pillows, the green tights…ugh.