Skip to main content

A Halloween retrospective, or bad costume choices through the years

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday. Some of my friends go absolutely bonkers over it, and begin planning costumes in early summer. I'm not one of them, and chuckle when I think of some of the costumes I've donned in my life.

As a kid I usually went the pirate, hobo, and gypsy route. Later on, though, well, things started to get a little sillier.

There was the year I went as a Hershey's kiss. Seriously. Complete with chocolate 'perfume'. Now that was something...brown Danksin leotard from head to toe, kiss foil 'body' with a big hoop at the bottom so it really looked like a kiss shape, white tab sticking out the top. It was hilarious. Hard to go to the bathroom, but somehow I managed..and I giggled when everyone started craving chocolate if they stood by me for more than a minute. That chocolate extract I used as perfume brought out the chocolate hound in the best of 'em.

Dolly Parton was next. Blonde wig,  gold lame sleeveless vest and flared hip huggers over gold heels. All way too tight, lips seriously glossy, fake eyelashes ridiculously full and dark. I even adopted a Tennessee twang (or so I thought) to complete the effect. Hah.

Then came Morticia. 'nuff said.

At some point I became a geek, and actually agreed to be a character from Pong. Again, 'nuff said. We thought we were pretty funny, though, the Pong team. That's all I'm sayin'.

For some reason, perhaps in reaction to the Pong experience, the following year was a vavoomy year. I found a gorgeous mermaid costume that fit like, well, skin. It was shimmery and fun and light and...as it turned out, very see through. I would have died if I'd known that as I was standing in front of a window during a big office gathering that afternoon that nothing was left to anyone's imagination.

Crap. Fortunately, I didn't find this out for several years, when a former colleague of mine and I were laughing over antics we'd witnessed at that company and it came up. Really?! I still blushed, but I don't think a post-event blush really counts for much in the big scheme.

My kids, they've done a great job as ninjas, various cartoon characters, popular literature figures (Harry Potter is this year's theme, actually), Star Wars characters, Risky Business theme, etc. And they're always good.

They'll look back, though, one day, and have themselves a retrospective moment, I'm guessing. You just can't play that many characters without a backstory to tell at some point, right?

This year we're low-keying the whole event, and going to a party with friends. Nobody is dressing up, unless you count donning bathing suits to sit in the hot tub.

Happy Halloween!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hello there 48

And where on earth did 35-47 go??? But I'm being overly dramatic. Again. See, four dozen? Not such a bad place to be when you're me. I've done a lot, I've seen a lot, I've raised a family and landed airplanes and docked yachts and landed (then released of course!) a marlin and climbed mountains and run a LOT of miles and loved deeply and long and hard and felt..so much that, surprisingly did not kill me..that I feel stronger and more centered and energized than in a long time. And I'm blessed with more than one person can ever rightly expect in one lifetime. And I now possess the wisdom to observe a nanosecond longer than I would have 20 years ago before jumping headlong into a new adventure. Which means many less mistakes but still the desire to stretch and grow and be better and more open and generally less judgemental and overall more accepting and mostly, mostly, knowing that this gift of life is precious and special and mine to experience any way ...

It's been a minute

Oh, what a summer it's been! Heat, the likes of which we have never seen seems to be enveloping the planet. They told us this would happen, and it is.  Now what? Is it time to think underground bunkers? To really explore moon colonies? To continue, on an individual basis to do what we feel we can to help the greater effort? We bought a hybrid two years ago. We'll probably buy an electric car once we feel like the infrastructure is in place, but right now, it's not.  We recycle. Glass ( WHO is drinking all of that wine?! I ask myself each time I toss the bottles into the big bin.). Food. We compost all but animal products, and use it in the garden.  Cardboard/cans/plastics go in the recycle bin each Tuesday. My husband thinks the whole recycle thing is a big scam, and that all of the recycling and trash gets taken to the same place - the dump - because there isn't adequate staffing to sort and really carry out the recycle process.  I feel this is a cynical view, but ...

More angst on the unfinished book

Bear with me here, as I'm nearly at a decision point with this project. Really, I am. As I've reread and contemplated writing the finish, then going back and scrubbing and editing like crazy and generally attempting to update a piece I began so long ago, I've become exhausted. Repeatedly. Last night, in a text exchange with Daughter, I explained I'd picked up the manuscript again and was seriously thinking of finishing it. And she replied, 'Mom, you should just start something new. That thing is almost 20 years old now, and you're a completely different person than you were when you started it. Just know that I look forward to a finished project out of you one day, and really, why not go for something more current and stop wasting time on the old stuff you'll practically have to rewrite anyway? ' Out of the mouths of babes, right?