2002-11-01 - 5:47 p.m.

I'm actually not a big fan of the Halloween costume - I was traumatized as a child. My mother, you see, is way into Halloween, as she is all the holidays. (She bakes a cherry pie on Washington's birthday, I shit you not. Hard to believe I'm her child, isn't it?) So every year of my childhood, she'd dream up elaborate costumes and make them herself. Whatever I wanted to be, she'd find a way to make it. One year, a box of cereal. I think my parents worked for a month on that costume - my Mom found a giant cardboard box, and cut out arm holes and a small, rectangular hole to see out. My dad, who is actually quite talented, painted the box from an actual cereal box (the one with the toucan, for the record) and let me tell you, it was magnificent. An exact replica, an artistic wonder. And also HEAVY. It pressed hard on the top of my head, and the tops of the armholes cut into my shoulders, and while that little rectangular eyehole was aesthetically pleasing, the bouncing that occured while I walked made it quite difficult to see. I won first place in the costume parade that year, but I paid for it.

A few years later, cardboard box trauma forgotten, I decided to be a bag of groceries. Again, my mother rose to the occasion, acquiring a huge brown paper bag (from roll delivery at my uncle's deli), outfitting me in a brown leotard and tights, and stapling empty food containers around the top of the bag, on the inside. Half an egg carton, a milk carton, the front of a cookie box, etc, and in the middle of all this rose my head. And my head couldn't just be a head, then, could it? So it became a cabbage. She pulled my hair back, painted my face green, and CUT THE TOP OFF A CABBAGE. She then strung a piece of elastic through to keep it on me, and placed it atop my head, sending my father running for the camera to take a picture for posterity.

That cabbage hat is what did it, really. Ruined dressing up for me forever. It was so heavy, and the elastic bit into my chin, and it was just all around horrible. I spent the entire evening saying, "No.. don't make me wear the cabbage hat..." while my head rolled around on my neck like one of those bobbing dogs you see in the back windows of Dodge D@rts.

I told my mom about the trauma years later, and we laugh about it now. I tell her she was fulfilling her own competitive needs through me and those costumes, and she protests, "but you WANTED to be a bag of groceries..." Although now she admits she should have just used a few leaves of cabbage attached to a knit hat instead of the actual cabbage. That thing probably reeked by the time I got home from trick or treating, too.

Hope everyone had a happy halloween, anyway.

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