Kids Take The Fun Out Of Halloween

I looked over the inventory of Halloween costumes at the store and was temporarily stupefied. Then I examined the price tags and was momentarily petrified.
When I was growing up, there were basically two choices of Halloween costumes: you bought a Collegeville costume consisting of a chintzy plastic mask and vinyl suit bearing the likeness of a cartoon character or a witch, or you made your own costume
In my house, it usually came down to the latter, and the latter meant making something as easy as possible. I’m talking a white sheet with eyeholes cut out.
I have a photo of myself and my brother dressed up for Halloween one year. My long hair is in ponytails; I’ve painted freckles on my face; and I’m wearing a baby doll dress. I think I was supposed to be Pippi Longstocking.
My brother has a piece of burlap over his head and tied around his neck. God only knows what he’s supposed to be.
When my son was born, I wasn’t about to resort to a store-bought costume. Weeks before Halloween, I’d begin making the cutest, most creative costume I could come up with, keeping in mind my limited crafting and sewing skills.
That first year I kept it simple since my son was only 10 weeks old: a pumpkin.
I’d just come off maternity leave and brought my baby with me to a staff meeting where most of my co-workers were seeing him for the first time -- an adorable cherub-cheeked infant dressed as a fat, orange pumpkin. Unfortunately, my son was having some stomach discomfort that day and, just as my boss began to speak; he let loose, forever becoming known as the smelly little pumpkin.
I thought my idea to make him one of the new blue M&Ms the following year was a stroke of genius. I found a royal blue, long-sleeved jumper. I then enlarged an M&M package on the copy machine and used it to cut out a white felt M&M logo to attach to the front. I put a royal blue baseball cap on him with the same logo. I then stuffed the inside of the jumper with foam to ensure he’d be nice and round like the candy-coated chocolate.
It was adorable. Unfortunately, having just learned to walk, my son didn’t quite have his balance yet. And all that foam didn’t help. He looked like a Weeble, only this one did fall down -- about every two steps.
My coup de grace, though, had to have been the turtle. That took a lot of wire hangers and every piece of green felt Michaels craft store had, but it was worth all the envious looks from the other mothers at the Center Place Halloween Horribles parade that year. My son the turtle even made the cover of the Hillsborough County recycling newsletter. What a compliment. Cute and environmentally aware.
The only problem was the size of the costume. In his enthusiasm to get to the next treat station at the Halloween Horribles parable, he kept inadvertently knocking all of the other kids off the path with his massive shell. You could hear screams and cries in his wake.
Those days were over way too soon. I watched in dismay as parents proudly paraded their toddlers in whimsical costumes that I could have created if my son had just given me a few more years to experiment with him.
But, apparently, there comes a day when mom-made costumes are deemed uncool and anything that even hints of cute is unworthy.
So goodbye to 10-cent sheets of felt and hello to $39.99 Freddy Krueger masks.
I don’t even get to prance around the neighborhood in my witch’s hat anymore with my best friend, Rita, ushering our children from house to house anymore. They’re now too old to trick or treat with mom.
Instead, I sit in my house; sipping wine and answering the door, listening to Rita lament the fact that she didn’t realize her youngest son, Jimmy, wasn’t wearing shoes until she had already driven to our house. Now he has to trick or treat in his socks.
Meanwhile, I’m bewailing the fact that I underestimated the number of children that would be knocking on my door begging for goodies. After spending all that money on my son’s store-bought mask, I’d gotten stingy with the candy.
After giving out all this year’s candy as well as last year’s leftover candy and some dime store toys I scrounged from my son’s bedroom, Rita and I desperately begin combing through my kitchen cabinets.
“Here we go,” said Rita, spotting a cache of soy sauce packets from a local Chinese restaurant in my refrigerator. “The kids just want to get something. Their parents can weed out the inappropriate stuff later.”
Suddenly I understood why my son would return from trick or treating with an occasional ketchup packet or keychain with the logo of some bank on it.
“That’ll do,” I said, pouring us another glass of wine.