Halloweens of half a painting

I would be hard pressed to come up with a favorite all-time Halloween costume, but I think it’s a real comment about who I am that my most memorable ones were as an adult.
As a kid, I opted for the standard stuff: Monsters, superheroes, baseball players, Cher, etc. Like most people my age, one of the most memorable things about trick-or-treating as a kid is getting snapped in the face by that weak little elastic string that was used to hold a flimsy plastic Casper mask on your face. Fortunately, my mother would usually intervene with tape before my dad got to us with a stapler.
As I moved into my 20s, Halloween costume parties became more of a creative exhibition, and my wife and I always tried to come up with costumes to amuse and entertain. The two most memorable ones were tandem get-ups.
A friend of ours used to have a huge Halloween party every year upstate, and we would make the trek, costumes in tow, to join the festivities. This was a real showcase of imaginative costumes, so we had to be on our a-game for this one. I am not sure how we came to this particular costume, but I was a lost person on a milk carton. My wife designed the carton, which was a giant cardboard box with a place cut out for my face. And the brand of milk? Holy Cow. My wife’s costume? A holy cow, complete with wings, halo and udders. And if you have ever tried to eat or drink while wearing a cardboard box, I assure you it is not easy.
The next year, we again opted for a joint costume, this time selecting the famed painting American Gothic. I don’t mean the people in the painting. I mean the actual painting. Again, my wife was in charge of costume construction, since she is far more talented in that arena than I. If I were to try and do it, it would end with me being superglued to the garage floor.
My wife recreated the painting in two parts, frame and all, and made cut-outs for our faces. She hooked up some rigging so that we could slip our respective half painting on, put our face in the cut-outs, stand together and boom -- instant masterpiece. While we looked great standing together, we looked somewhat odd when we were apart.
PARTYGOER: What are you supposed to be?
ME: Gothic. American’s in the den.
PARTYGOER:
But once my 20s became more defined by parenting rather than partying, we have shifted out attention to our kids’ costumes. This will be the second year in a row that my wife has opted for matching costumes for our kids. I think this is because she has found resistance from me when trying to dress them in matching outfits in their everyday attire. The resistance comes from my ignorance, because I am afraid that if I were in charge of matching outfits, my son would end up in an oversized dress. Matching is for gamedays, as far as I am concerned.
Last year, they went as Raggedy Ann and Andy. My son, Parker, didn’t particularly care one way or the other what he wore at that age, so it was pretty easy. When you’re one-and-a-half, every day presents new things, so he probably just assumed that a spot of red on his nose was just something you did. Allie, meanwhile, insisted on wearing her outfit until around March.
This year, they are going to be Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Parker is showing that he is his sister’s brother, and has, for the most part, worn a Mickey Mouse outfit for the past week.
I think I may have to return to my costume roots this year and find something to don when I take them trick-or-treating. (Commence Goofy jokes.) Maybe I’ll enlist my wife’s help, so I can avoid damaging myself and possibly the house.
There are scads of possibilities that I am sure I can come up with. Even though I don’t go to big Halloween parties any more, I suppose that’s no reason not to enjoy the evening and have some fun with the kids. Plus, if I dress up, I won’t feel as bad taken a cut of the candy haul.