Mom dreaded Halloween when my brother and I were kids. On the one hand my brother, Kevey, could always be conned by Mom into “being something easy.” He was a ghost every year of his young life. But unlike most ghosts, he was never completely white; in fact, he was always the ghost that by coincidence happened to be the color of the sheets that were earmarked for the Goodwill donation bell.
I recall one year in particular when he was a pink satin ghost with butter stains. He didn’t to attend. "My mind suit smells like popcorn!" when he announced cheerfully stupid, walking through the hallway in nothing but a pink satin sheet, and Underoos. But hey, as long as he is to trick or treat, it did not much matter to him what he was dressed like. It was all about the candy.
For me, however, was no bigger hit decision that the year was more important than what I be for Halloween. It was my pattern list of Halloween costume PassAbsolutes: (1): It had to be creative. (2): It had to be something or someone that I wanted to be; not Mom. And (3): (which was the most important one), my costume had to be better than anyone on the block, including that Shelly Tuttle.
I also, under any circumstance, did not want to end up like my brother.
Mom and I would start the costume dance around the middle of September. She would ask me what I wanted to be for Halloween and I would tell her I was not yet certain, and every year she would ask me if I wanted to be a ghost. "How about a nice lemon colored ghost … Yellow would be with your hair, Bethy beautiful." "Mom, I protested," you would not even my hair if I have a sheet that had. "The Halloween say the end of her arm wrestle with me, I would think about it and returned to her.
Their follow-up tactic was to them, spirit me away to our local Zody in a lame attempt to me in the interest>costume-in-a-box displays. I loved the smell of Zody’s, with its stale buttered popcorn combined with the rubber of new shoes. I’m assuming at this point it was Zody’s, and not my brother that was responsible for the signature odor that would hit me when the doors whooshed open to reveal Hong Kong costumes piled to the ceiling.
“Zody’s always has such a nice selection of costumes, don’t you think?… How ’bout this one?” She grinned as she held up the rectangular Tomy’s box with the clear plastic see-thru panel and found a somewhat formed plastic mask with two eye-holes in it. The molded plastic yellow hair like no princess, I saw had ever seen. At least I think it was a princess costume. The masks resembled the horror movies that my cousin Donovan watched every Saturday creepy with his buddies. You see all the ugly and fake. (The costume, not Donovan and Company). No, I was afraid that my costume had the real deal.
Meanwhile, mybrother was eyeballing a GI Joe costume box. “Put that down, Kevey. You’re going to be a ghost, remember?” Mom took Kevey by the hand and directed him toward the color books.
“I don’t see anything, Mom,” I bellyached. So we would leave Zody’s with a big bag of salty popcorn-like stuff, and Kevey’s new coloring book. It was a definite sign that he was going to remain a ghost if he was rewarded in advance with a new color book.
“I know what I want to be,” I announced at The table on the night as a mother separated the candy in a pumpkin shell and tarantulas. "… I want to be Pippi Longstocking." Father said nothing, just always reading his Herald-Examiner. He knew that this would be my obsession for the next four weeks, and would require much time to take a position closer to the big day. Mom just groaned. "Why can not you just something that Bethy, why would not a clown or a hobo? How about Captain Kangaroo?"
Dad looked over the edge of the paper."Yes, Captain Kangaroo, you would not shave for a month." I rolled my eyes. They had no idea how important the delivery of the costume.
Next was the obligatory Mom guilt trip.
"Why can not you pick something normal, why the theatrics?" Pippi Longstocking "She's a book's character. No one as a book mark!" They simply do not understand: "That was my one chance a year to pick out fabrics, dream my own creation, and when all otherelse.
Mom finally relinquished, like she always did. Then she would shift gears, jump on board, and get all excited about making the costume genuine for me. We went to the fabric store and picked up wire to thread through my hair in order to make it stand straight out, in true Pippi fashion. She made me a dress like Pippi’s, complete with the huge patches. We even searched high and low to find a plastic monkey for my shoulder.
I was so excited on Halloween night as I armed me with a pillow – they kept most of sweets – and waited for my brother to his ghostly appearance from his bedroom to make. Perhaps he would have the lemon colored spirit this year. Then I saw a four-and-a-half-foot lumps appear before me draped in a floral print sheet with two eye sockets.
Well, that was a first. This was a new low, even for Mom. "Are you kidding? He looks like Grandma's tablecloth!" Kevey smiled: "Hey, Mom! You guess what I was! You guess whatI was!” Mom just grinned. “He didn’t want to be the yellow ghost this year, so I asked him if he wanted to be a tablecloth.”
“Come on Kevey,” I sighed, in a display of sympathy for my little brother who knew not that this would probably become the incident that would be responsible for years of psychiatric bills later in life. Oh, well. Candy was the focus, so I cast all thoughts of Kevey’s future mental issues aside and headed for the chocolate.
I would fill up my first Pillowcase with Kevey in tow, we visited all the neighbors in the vicinity. Then I would go to a second round with my friends in a radius that included as many homes as possible treated in one night.
One of my friends at school, Davy, dressed as the Green Lantern. The problem, he was not like the Green Lantern look at all. He looked like a masked Popel.
For me the excitement of Halloween was not all about the candy. It was about cleaning itself as a favorite character, and waitsfor the people in the neighborhood can be found offering their admiration when she realized the perfection of my costume. So I was quite devastated when nobody be able to figure out who I was, it seemed. How could she not know? My costume was perfectly embodies.
But a person has my well-drawn character, sense and that person the difference.
Mrs. Crosby was the class and my teacher told me that she would be cleaning itself as a nurse for Halloween, andmake sure to drop by her house. When we arrived at Mrs. Crosby’s door, she looked me up one side and down the other, and without missing a beat said, “Bethy, you should win an award. I have never seen a Becky Thatcher quite like that.” My face fell. “I’m not Becky Thatcher, I’m…” Mrs. Crosby laughed, “You’re Pippi Longstocking! I knew it all the time!”
Mrs. Crosby invited us in, and true to her word, was dressed in a white cap and real nurse shoes. She had made up special treat bags for us, complete with Halloween pencils and homemade pumpkin cookies that were still warm. As we headed out the door, Mrs. Crosby gazed at Davy and after a moment or two finally gave up. “I just can’t guess what character you are, dear?” He was crestfallen, and I knew how he felt since I had experienced the same blank looks myself the whole evening. Davy finally shrugged his shoulders and smiled, “I’m a booger Mrs. Crosby. A big, green booger.”
That was one of my last dressing-up years. Now that I have my own children, I can see that my littlest exhibits the same need to be different. She cornered me in the kitchen one morning to and announced that she was going to be Shirley Temple. Shirley Temple? Where did she get that idea? How am I ever going to find a white polka dot dress with dots that big? And the hair; is she crazy?
And I know just as sure that I’m going to go grab my sweater and take her to the fabric store. Maybe I can use fabric glue instead of Sewing. It would be much faster, and maybe I'll find some shoes Tap, along with the clothes and hair. It is the largest ever Shirley Temple, and very probably the only one Shirley Temple in the neighborhood. And, as is likely, few will recognize the character, but they do not mind a bit. She knows what she wants. Yes, she's my daughter.
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