November 2004

Halloween? Bah Humbug

Musings by Beth Weiss, Region 3 WebSpinner

Published in MPulse, October 2004

My kids don’t dress up for school in Halloween costumes—that just isn’t done anymore.  They wear their costumes for two hours during the authorized Trick or Treating period (which is sometimes on Halloween and sometimes the night before).  It’s hardly worth it to put together a costume for them.

But when I was a kid, Halloween was a big deal.  We planned our costumes way in advance and we wore them to school and we trick-or-treated our way home from school and kept ringing doorbells until it was so late our parents made us come in.

I can only remember two costumes, though.  There must have been more—but I can only think of two.  Neither of them made any sense, and one is so embarrassing that even now, 30 years later, I’m not sure I should admit to it. 

I was invited to a Halloween party.  I must have been about 12, and it was one of those parties wherever one in the class was invited.  In fact, that was probably the only reason I was invited—because they couldn’t leave just one kid out.  I couldn’t think of a costume.  I tried and tried.  And I asked my mother.  That was where things really went wrong.  I would have been better going without a costume. 

Mom suggested that I dress as a giant Q-tip.  No, you didn’t read that wrong—a giant Q-tip.  I wore a big cardboard box with a white top part and a white bottom part.  A giant Q-tip.  I don’t know what I was thinking, other than that it didn’t occur to me that my mother could be wrong.  Was I wrong about that—and was she wrong. 

You can’t sit down in a cardboard box, so of course, the costume came off quickly—and after seeing the looks on the other kid’s faces when I told them what I was, it definitely was not going back on. 

The next year, in defiance, I was an E-M-U-K.  My friend Lisa and I swore to secrecy—we’d never tell anyone what an E-M-U-K was.  We wore jeans, t-shirts that said “I’m an E-M-U-K”, and cool earth shoes.  We got candy anyway—but all the adults told us we weren’t in costume.  And that was the end of Halloween costumes for me. 

I’ve tried again, from time to time.  I spent too much time and too much money on my costume for the 2002 RG with the Jimmy Buffet costume dance theme.  I was a waitress from the Paradise Cafe.  Nobody thought it was funny.  (Cheesburger in Paradise.  Get it?  Nobody else did either.) I searched the web and found how to make a wrap dress for an Egyptian handmaiden.  Another bust—people thought it was a toga. 

Halloween?  Bah, humbug.

©2004, Beth Weiss, all rights reserved