The Decompression of a Boomer

Ian, Ben, Nick, Aaron and Neil

Beware … Halloween is near! This is a photo of our sons and friends at a neighborhood Halloween party back in 1993. They had congregated at our house and thrown together costumes using stuff from our Halloween box, which still sits in a cobwebby corner of our basement.

Hey! Halloween falls on a Saturday night this year – WOO-O-O-O-HOO-O-O-O! – and maybe you oughtta be thinking about your costume! I have given mine some thought: Depending on my mood, I will either be a ‘slug,’ ‘vegetable,’ ‘bag lady,’ ‘witch,’ ‘pampered wife,’ … one of these (check it out), or, ‘Queen Josephine.’

I’ll be home Halloween evening with my husband who, in meshing with my mood, and/or costume, might be a ‘couch potato,’ ‘bookworm,’ ‘remote control operator,’ ‘hobo,’ ‘millionaire,’ ‘King David,’ or … ‘James Bond.’ ‘Prince Charming’ would work magnanimously well, especially, if, for some obvious, or inexplicable reason, I am a ‘witch.’

Anyway, our daughter, Megan, has been invited to a Halloween party and she needs a costume. What to be for Halloween? Our box in the basement is still crammed with stuff that should have gone to Goodwill long ago, because I doubt Megan or I ever again will be a Ninja Turtle, a gigantic M&M, Zorro, a six-year-old Pirate, Mad scientist (with those goofy, coke-bottle, headache-inducing glasses), wear an aligator nose, or drape discarded white sheets, reeking of ‘basement’ over our heads, with two cut-out holes for the eyes that never stay put so the flesh of your nose is sticking out of your ghost-face and you bump yourself senseless getting out the door, into the night, after the loot.

So Megan and I started brainstorming costume ideas – ‘witch’ and ‘hippie’ were ‘out’ for her, she said, as was ‘angel,’ ‘fairy,’ or ‘cat.’ Geez!, there had to be something half-way original! So I checked out the Internet. Now, I don’t know, the last time I searched online the costumes seemed more … innocent, or certainly, reflective of a less complicated time. Step aside, ‘starlets’, ‘Star Wars characters’ and ‘Spiderman!’ – and make way for … ‘Octomom?’ (Check it out!)

Hey! I’m all over this costume! It’s simple, and I don’t want to drag our Halloween box out of storage, if I can prevent it. For your ‘Octomom’ costume you wear your t-shirt, flip-flops and jeans and just add lips (big ones), long black hair, and eight baby dolls. You could probably get the dolls at the dollar store, except one aspiring ‘Octomom’ would likely clean them out of babies — unless they’ve ordered hundreds of them, in anticipation of Halloween Octomom’s popularity. Oh, and you’ll need some duct tape or a bag or some way to tote your babies – Octopus tentacles???

Admittedly, it’s not the most comely costume … Might look appropriate on grandmothers, since so many are raising their grandkids, anyway. Young girls dressed as ‘Octomom’ wouldn’t come off as wholesome and inspiring as, say, young ‘Amelia Erharts,’ although hauling eight bald-headed babies around for the duration of your Saturday-Halloween-Night-Party-Extravaganza might prove a strong and thoughtful deterrent to stopping in the graveyard on the way home to cuddle with Dracula…

I never plan too far ahead for Halloween on account of one never knows what the weather is going to do. Last year it turned out to be nice – and two days before Halloween I finally did acknowlege its coming, dug out the Halloween box, scattered a few decorations about, carved a pumpkin with Megan, and bought some candy for the trick-or-treaters. Except, I hid the candy from myself and didn’t find it again until three weeks later, stuffed into a basement shelf.

Megan still hasn’t decided on a costume. She is totally not amused by ‘Octomom.’ She was a ‘witch’ last year. This year she could be a ‘rock star,’ or an ‘orphan,’ or a ‘sack,’ or ‘Pippi Longstocking,’ or a ‘Princess’…

I just hope between, say, October 28 and October 31 nature doesn’t come trick-or-treating at our door as the ‘Abominable Snowman.’ Well, if that does happen, then we’ll all just dress up like Laplanders.

Tags: Halloween, Octomom costume

This entry was posted on October 16, 2009 at 4:53 am and is filed under Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.