Do You Need A Reason To Wear A Costume?

This Halloween, I wore two costumes. Well, three, if you count my daily costume of being awesome. (Which I do.)

On Thursday morning I attended a Preschool Halloween Parade with my sister/boss (and mother of my two nannying charges, the nephews). Quinn, the nephew that attends the preschool with the aforementioned parade, was dressed as Bob the Builder (or, as we kept singing it- Quuuinn the builder, can? he? fix? it?) The parade consisted of a lot of little kids walking down a street with their hands tied on a long rope. They were dressed in head-to-toe costumes like puppies and firefighters and in varying degrees of distress. The distress depended on how far away their parents were from them as well as how badly their costumes had been messed up. (One girl had her puppy face falling off and was, quite naturally, visibly upset.)

The parade walked ... v  e  r  y...   slowly from one end of the street to the other, where the local fire station #2 was, and back. We walked alongside them the whole time. It was kind of like we were on parade too, which was fun. But frankly I may just prefer the sit and observe kind . Couldn't the little kids have paraded around me? I was in costume. All in all, the walk was maybe two tenths of a mile, and took forty minutes. But it was cute, so well worth the mileage.

My sister and I, being the super fun people that we are, decided that we too would dress up for the Halloween Parade. And as luck would have it, Kate happened to have some bee costumes on hand. They had been bought years before and were designed for two-to-four year olds. They had black antenna, orange stripes and orange polka-dotted bow ties (as bees do.) So in the true spirit of Halloween, we went off to go watch (and walk with) the parade.

Kate and I were the only parent/authority figures that were decked out for the event. When we first stepped out of the car, quite a few heads turned. Maybe fifteen. It was hard to say, as I had a squirming tiger in my hand (the other nephew, Cole, too young for preschool and in his festive tiger costume.) One would not call their looks or laughter "judgement-free."

Kids on a rope!

Here's my attitude towards costumes: if you are going to wear a costume, and it is a legitimate occasion to wear one (rule of thumb: if you have to question whether it is legitimate: it isn't), then by all means- go forth in your festooned glory. So why the judging, folks? After all, it wasn't like Kate and I wore our tiny bee costumes to a cotillion. We weren't dressed as outrageous as Lady Gaga. We were wearing pants, for goodness sake! So Kate and I told ourselves that the other parent/authority figures were just jealous and rocked the little bee costumes like they were meant to be rocked. (Hard.)

Beee jealous

For my second costume I did dress as outrageously as Lady Gaga. Because I was Lady Gaga.

For it, I wore my twin sister's two-foot blonde wig which she somehow happened to have in the back of her closet, with a bunch of clothes that I (shamefully) didn't have to purchase because I already owned. (But since I do not wear them all together, I rarely achieve the Lady Gaga look in my day-to-day.) The piece de la resistance was wearing my father's baby blue satin butterfly top from the seventies.

My father's. Baby blue satin. Butterfly top.

We found the shirt in our attic one summer, and had brought it down to show my mom/ rib her about wearing it. She simply replied, "Oh, you found dad's shirt. I made that for him!" She said this proudly. Without even a hint of irony.

The discovery of dad's blue satin shirt didn't bring on as many levels of confusions as one might expect. You see, my dad was in a band in the seventies (but who wasn't, it seems?) They toured parts of the Northeast, especially the college scene. That was how he met my mother. (But that's a different story altogether.) My mother had made the shirt for my father to wear on stage. (Again, it was the seventies.) And so, decades later, I got to wear it on Halloween. I'm sure made him feel very masculine and manly. Baby blue satin butterflies do that to a man. The shirt itself was a hit at my party, as I shared the shirt's origin with just about everyone who asked where I could have got such a thing. Because that is what good children do.

 

P-p-p-poker face

 At the end of the night, when the blue satin shirt was carefully put away (saved for future outfits) and the blonde wig had come off, I knew it had been a good Halloween. All thanks to my father, and the numerous opportunities to wear costumes.