Boo!!!
Well, it doesn’t seem like I have permission to post my short story yet, so here’s a Halloween post. Do you do Halloween? My pastor friend hates this holiday with a passion; he says it’s evil and ghoulish. I, on the other hand, am of the opinion that Halloween is what you make it. It’s all up to you. My favorite costumes are the homemade ones.
My all-time favorite costume was invented by I12 (with a little help from his mother) three years ago. I don’t have a picture, but here’s what he did. We had an old Scary Alien costume that consisted of a cape and a rubber brain, with eyes attached to it, that you were supposed to put on your head. I12 and I took the brain and cut the eyes off; put the brain on top of his head; wrapped an Ace bandage around the head; added splotches of blue face paint to the bandage; and finally, as a nice finishing touch, I12 stuck a glue stick under the bandage. He went as an overradiated accident victim who fell out of his car and hit his head on a nuclear power plant and his brain came out and now it is glowing. It was a huge success. Kids were stopping I12 on the street and asking him, in awed voices, “And who the heck are you?” Of course, by the time I12 finished his speech, the kids were usually gone.
In case you are wondering, our priest has always been telling us that we can dress up for Halloween, as long as we avoid the following costumes:
- Devil
- Witches
- Anything bloody
- Anything related to death.
I did well for the first few years. My kids were GI Joes, then scary aliens, and finally a scary alien and an accident victim. Then I made a major slip-up and let them get these:
And that is what K10 is going to be tonight. He’s going trick-or-treating with his best friend’s family. (At school, there are no masks allowed, so he just puts on the cape and goes as a crazy monk.) (He used the same cape to dress up as Christopher Columbus for his Wax Museum project last year. Very convenient!)
I12 is not going. Halloween has lost its attraction for him a few years ago.
On a few occasions, I had to dress up as well. Here are Mr. Goldie and myself as a medieval knight and his middle-aged medieval princess:
Once in my old job, we had to wear costumes to work. Yes, that’s right, we had to. There was a contest, and each department had to pick a theme. So, our IT department went into the meeting room, shut the door, and sat down in a futile attempt to decide what we were going to be. If I remember it right, my suggestion was to wear whatever clothes we already had at home, this way we wouldn’t have to spend any extra money. But I was rudely interrupted by our new network administrator. She was quite a character. I had never seen anyone so bossy. We actually had several candidates interviewing for the job, but this girl won Mr. Big over by telling him the important facts of her life:
- She was 25
- She had ten years experience as network admin
- All ten years of her experience entailed working for her Mom’s home-based business
- And she had seventeen computers at home (as an aside, I think I12 is getting very close to having the same number of computers in his room – it’s hard to tell as he has taken them all apart. But I digress.)
A few weeks after Halloween, the girl was fired after she took down the email server, causing Mr. Big and Mr. Crush to work all weekend through to get it back up. But I digress again, so back to our meeting. Our network admin very strongly suggested that we all dressed up as the Halloween ghouls.
“What’s Halloween ghouls,” asked the puzzled immigrant two-thirds of the IT department.
“Monsters, witches, that kind of thing,” Network Admin instructed us.
“Um, I can’t go as a witch,” I volunteered meekly.
“That’s easy!” Network Admin assured me. “You buy yourself a black pointy hat…”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m not allowed to dress up as a witch, for religious reasons.”
Here’s how inexperienced Mr. Big was in office policies – at that point, he actually proceeded to give me a lecture on team spirit and how I could not let the team down. Here’s how inexperienced I was – instead of telling him to go play with himself in traffic, I listened and tried to meet him halfway.
“How ‘bout a black cat? I can come in as a black cat.”
“No, black cat is no good. You have to be a witch.”
But I decided to draw the line at black cats.
“I can come in as a black cat, or I can take that day off. You choose.”
Network Admin piped up helpfully, “Or she can be a sacrificial virgin.”
Everyone roared with laughter, except for Mr. Crush, who was for some reason dying of embarrassment.
Long story short, I came in as a black cat. When our HR manager heard of my plight, she went out and bought me a set of cat ears and tail. The store only had those in Dalmatian, so my final costume was “a black cat that sat on white paint.” It was a huge success, but the prize went to the marketing department, who dressed up as construction workers. (That was exactly what I had been suggesting all along! Sheesh.)
Speaking of prizes, we finally found out why Network Admin had insisted so much on us dressing as Halloween ghouls. Turned out, she had a prize-winning monster costume at home.
Here’s the picture of our department, all dressed up… I’m the one with the whiskers. The Network Admin is the only girl not wearing any costume or face paint… hee hee.
So how’s your Halloween going?
My all-time favorite costume was invented by I12 (with a little help from his mother) three years ago. I don’t have a picture, but here’s what he did. We had an old Scary Alien costume that consisted of a cape and a rubber brain, with eyes attached to it, that you were supposed to put on your head. I12 and I took the brain and cut the eyes off; put the brain on top of his head; wrapped an Ace bandage around the head; added splotches of blue face paint to the bandage; and finally, as a nice finishing touch, I12 stuck a glue stick under the bandage. He went as an overradiated accident victim who fell out of his car and hit his head on a nuclear power plant and his brain came out and now it is glowing. It was a huge success. Kids were stopping I12 on the street and asking him, in awed voices, “And who the heck are you?” Of course, by the time I12 finished his speech, the kids were usually gone.
In case you are wondering, our priest has always been telling us that we can dress up for Halloween, as long as we avoid the following costumes:
- Devil
- Witches
- Anything bloody
- Anything related to death.
I did well for the first few years. My kids were GI Joes, then scary aliens, and finally a scary alien and an accident victim. Then I made a major slip-up and let them get these:
And that is what K10 is going to be tonight. He’s going trick-or-treating with his best friend’s family. (At school, there are no masks allowed, so he just puts on the cape and goes as a crazy monk.) (He used the same cape to dress up as Christopher Columbus for his Wax Museum project last year. Very convenient!)
I12 is not going. Halloween has lost its attraction for him a few years ago.
On a few occasions, I had to dress up as well. Here are Mr. Goldie and myself as a medieval knight and his middle-aged medieval princess:
Once in my old job, we had to wear costumes to work. Yes, that’s right, we had to. There was a contest, and each department had to pick a theme. So, our IT department went into the meeting room, shut the door, and sat down in a futile attempt to decide what we were going to be. If I remember it right, my suggestion was to wear whatever clothes we already had at home, this way we wouldn’t have to spend any extra money. But I was rudely interrupted by our new network administrator. She was quite a character. I had never seen anyone so bossy. We actually had several candidates interviewing for the job, but this girl won Mr. Big over by telling him the important facts of her life:
- She was 25
- She had ten years experience as network admin
- All ten years of her experience entailed working for her Mom’s home-based business
- And she had seventeen computers at home (as an aside, I think I12 is getting very close to having the same number of computers in his room – it’s hard to tell as he has taken them all apart. But I digress.)
A few weeks after Halloween, the girl was fired after she took down the email server, causing Mr. Big and Mr. Crush to work all weekend through to get it back up. But I digress again, so back to our meeting. Our network admin very strongly suggested that we all dressed up as the Halloween ghouls.
“What’s Halloween ghouls,” asked the puzzled immigrant two-thirds of the IT department.
“Monsters, witches, that kind of thing,” Network Admin instructed us.
“Um, I can’t go as a witch,” I volunteered meekly.
“That’s easy!” Network Admin assured me. “You buy yourself a black pointy hat…”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m not allowed to dress up as a witch, for religious reasons.”
Here’s how inexperienced Mr. Big was in office policies – at that point, he actually proceeded to give me a lecture on team spirit and how I could not let the team down. Here’s how inexperienced I was – instead of telling him to go play with himself in traffic, I listened and tried to meet him halfway.
“How ‘bout a black cat? I can come in as a black cat.”
“No, black cat is no good. You have to be a witch.”
But I decided to draw the line at black cats.
“I can come in as a black cat, or I can take that day off. You choose.”
Network Admin piped up helpfully, “Or she can be a sacrificial virgin.”
Everyone roared with laughter, except for Mr. Crush, who was for some reason dying of embarrassment.
Long story short, I came in as a black cat. When our HR manager heard of my plight, she went out and bought me a set of cat ears and tail. The store only had those in Dalmatian, so my final costume was “a black cat that sat on white paint.” It was a huge success, but the prize went to the marketing department, who dressed up as construction workers. (That was exactly what I had been suggesting all along! Sheesh.)
Speaking of prizes, we finally found out why Network Admin had insisted so much on us dressing as Halloween ghouls. Turned out, she had a prize-winning monster costume at home.
Here’s the picture of our department, all dressed up… I’m the one with the whiskers. The Network Admin is the only girl not wearing any costume or face paint… hee hee.
So how’s your Halloween going?
