Halloween is a time of year that brings back memories for some people. This is a great time of year to collect and record some really funny family stories. Ask your relatives what they dressed up as for Halloween when they were children. This is a good way to connect with living relatives, and to get a glimpse of what they were like as children. It is also a great way to get someone to tell you a story from their past.
My family enjoys Halloween, and there are many family stories connected with Halloween that are fun to share. Some of these stories involve hand made costumes.
I remember the year my dad told my sister that she could be whatever she wanted to be for Halloween. I believe that he thought she would want to be something classic, like a witch or a princess, when he made this promise to her. He must have been counting on something easy, something that he could walk into any drug store and quickly find a costume of. It would have been one those plastic costumes, that would go over a kid’s clothing. These were the kind of costumes that came with plastic masks that would cover your face, had two holes cut for eyes, and a thin rubber strap that held the mask on your head. Or, so he thought!
This was during the 1980’s, when one of the things my family loved to do was get some quarters and play the popular arcade games. To my dad’s complete surprise, my sister announced that she wanted to be Pac-Man that year. Try as he might, it seemed that the companies that made the plastic costumes neglected to make one that looked like Pac-Man. However, even if they did, my sister wouldn’t have it. She had in mind a three-dimensional kind of costume. I remember my dad using cardboard boxes, covered in yellow poster paper that was cut to fit, to make my sister into Pac-Man that year. It fit over her head perfectly, and you could barely see her inside the costume. It took hours of work to create! It was worth the effort, though, because it made my sister happy. She was, without a doubt, the kid with the coolest costume at school that year.
One year, my grandmother decided to dress up for a Halloween party that was at a local “Senior Center” she sometimes attended. She decided to be the Queen of Hearts, from Alice in Wonderland. I remember her copying the drawing from the queen of hearts card in the deck of cards she played solitaire with every day. She used the kitchen table as her workspace. I remember her painstakingly drawing the image onto white cloth, and then making the lines darker with a black sharpie marker. She cut the cloth into a loose, dress-like shape. Colors were added, and the whole thing was topped off with a scavenged plastic princess mask from one of our previous Halloween costumes. The costume was so cool that several other people borrowed it for Halloween in later years, including myself, and one of my friends.
Image by popculturegeek on Flickr