Who needs a Halloween costume when you wake up looking like this?
I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since I was twelve. This
is because my sister was too cool by then to partake in such antics and Ari was
always off doing something progressive with her school friends. This left me
with no one to trick or treat with except my two middle school friends who
lived in other neighborhoods and trick-or-treating with them meant I would be
trapped with them until my parents came to pick me up.
This is the same reason I hated sleepovers as a kid. I was
trapped. As you may have noticed, I prefer alone time. Social occasions were met with
much hesitancy not because I didn’t enjoy them but because I would need time to
recharge from them. When I did venture over to
other kids houses I made sure my Mom knew she was required to pick me up by
nine o’clock the next morning and that beautiful woman always would because she
understood. I inherited this trait from her. We have both endured the prolonged
mistake of inviting a friend over for the night and having them misconstrue
that invitation to include the entirety of the next day up until dinnertime. Well
there goes your whole weekend! I will accomplish no moody brooding or deep thoughts on humankind. So as you can see, choosing to walk an undetermined distance for an indeterminable amount of time through the dark in costume no
less, with your cackling friends and their parents was no small decision. I needed specifics and logistics. I needed to know there was a plan in place to get me
back home. What are you thinking, ten? Ten thirty? Are you driving me or will I
be picked up? Will there be a lot of kids in the car? Will it be a loud ride?
As all thirteen
year olds do, I entered teenagerdom and though I still really wanted a bucket
of candy I was afraid our mean hall monitor, busybody neighbor would ask for my
birth year, slam her door in my face, and call everyone on the street and turn
them against me.
In college I intentionally hid from Halloween, making sure
to drive home for the weekend as an excuse not to dress like a bimbo and endure
the peer pressure to drink excessively and have my bimbo costume fall apart
piece by piece as I staggered from room to room or sat on a half chewed taffy
stick causing a run in my thigh-highs. No no. I’ll pass thanks. I have also
almost always been of the disposition that does not enjoy costumes or themed
parties unless with just the right crowd. I have never been ‘in’ enough to feel
as though my, no doubt, clever costume ideas wouldn’t be met with ridicule by
others whose sense of humor was not nearly as refined as mine. They wouldn’t
begin to understand the genius of dressing only as the back half of a two-person horse costume.
Mostly I haven’t partaken in Halloween since the seventh
grade because I have an aversion to organized fun and crowd following- unless that crowd is running from something terrifying. I
hate scary things more than I hate being trendy and would surely wear leggings
as pants if I would otherwise be strung up and killed. Therefore, I’m opposed
to wearing a costume because life says I have to. You know my thoughts on The
Man.
Now as a mid-twenties antisocialite I have struck an impasse.
I have reluctantly found myself with a group of people that enjoy costumes
and irony. My excuses are not working and I fear I have less than a day now to
impress them with my heighted sense of humorous cynicism or unassuming genius
and I’m just really not in the mood.
This morning I thought of being a leg lamp. Then only the bottom half of me has to dress up.
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