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

Schnazzed up Desert Magnolia..again, thanks to LP the graphics guru!

Happy Thursday, everyone! Nope, it's not quite Spring yet, but sometimes a girl's gotta get a new 'do. Or in this case this girl's gotta get a new blog header. You know what I mean. Thank you LP! You rock. I love the artistic approach..it's soft but nice and still says, 'Enter here at your own risk, for opinions of a strong nature are sure to be expressed.' That's how I see it, anyway.

May I please be excused?

When G.G. was sorting through the mail the other night he stopped, then started to chuckle. And then he handed me an envelope in which a Jury Summons was contained. He chuckled because he has been called twice, and I have never been called. And for some reason he thought that wasn't right, or fair, or something. Well, I got mine. But it turns out I need to ask them a favor. To postpone my civic duty until after the holidays. Because before the holidays I am responsible for planning and overseeing and/or executing all year end marketing and PR for our little company, as well as publishing our final edition of an e-pub that now distributes to over 300K people each edition, so it needs to look good. And not have spelling errors and stuff. And then when that e-pub flies? I'll be flying, literally, to Providence, then to Europe and the Middle East. There's a lot to get done before I go, and I'm desperately hoping that our jury management system accepts my reque

Running Shoes...with Waves

Remember when you had one pair of tennies and they were for everything? Everything. Those days ended for me in high school when I started to run in earnest. In Nike Pegasus, their original running shoe, in white leather with a red swoosh. They were cushiony and durable and made me feel like less of a poser and more like a real runner. After that the style options exploded. I can't remember when Nike came out with their patented Air technology, but I had one of the original pairs..paid a ton of money for them, but it was money well spent. I ran all over the place in those things. All over. The foothills, the valley, sidewalks, parks, around the Academy, wherever...many miles in the originals. Generations of shoes later, I find myself not so happy with the Nike anymore. I've spent thousands of dollars on them in my life, but a few years back began to notice what I deemed to be a general decline in quality, though they've never stopped increasing their prices with ea