One of my goals, and it is not a particularly impressive one, is to come up with Halloween ideas in advance of the holiday instead of after it. As a kid, I am not sure that my brother and I ever did that, leading to very random costumes comprised of whatever was handy: Picture lederhosen, Groucho Marx nose and eyebrows, and glasses with the eyeballs hanging out by springs.
As a father, I have an opportunity to do better. A responsibility.
For Citrus’s first Halloween we got a nice little chicken outfit for her. I was a box of Tamiflu. And Elysia was Miss Influenza 2005. It was a year of SARS, so dressing our daughter as the avian flu seemed like the right thing to do. As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones.
Elysia googled avian flu Halloween and discovered a guy named Mark Maynard who had contemplated doing the same thing with his daughter that year, only his wife vetoed the idea. And then it got strange.
Mark’s daughter has the same name as ours, and she is one year older. Her father is white and her mother is Chinese-American. It was like finding a parallel universe, and discovering that it was located in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
The following year it was my turn to be vetoed — it was a silent, deadly veto — after I started to mention Mark Karr and JonBenet. Instead, I was an entomologist and Citrus was a ladybug, which worked out pretty well.
Last year my grand plans failed when Citrus refused to put on her costume. I was soy sauce, Elysia was going to be frozen vegetables, and Citrus was supposed to wear a white pillow. We were going to be fried rice.
Something tells me my ideas will soon lose out to a princess costume. But just in case, I’m open to your suggestions.
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