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.

Tragically unhip

Apparently, I am unfashionable.

I know, I know. I was shocked, too. But the guilty verdicts came at me from a variety of sources.

The first shot came from some of my younger co-workers. I am not really sure how the conversation started, but it somehow got around to how incredibly unhip I am. The main reason for this? Pleats. I apparently missed the last fashion newsletter, but according to my 20-something fashionistas, wearing pleats is the fashion equivalent of wearing a Carmen Miranda hat.

They also attacked my choice of socks. Apparently, your socks are supposed to match your shoes. Or not. I can't remember. But whatever the correct choice was, I had done it wrong. I generally opt for this method of selecting socks: Reach in drawer. Grab socks. Find out later if they are, in fact, a matching pair.

I didn't realize socks were supposed to be a fashion issue. I thought they were a functional item, much like a coffee maker. A coffee maker's job? Make coffee. A sock's job? Be a sock, right? Apparently, it is also tasked with "tying the outfit together," whatever that means. I for one do not consider anything I wear an "outfit." I consider it pants, a shirt, some shoes, etc. An "outfit" is what my wife has 46,000 of in her closet.

The next hit came from my wife. We were getting the kids ready for school, and I was on Parker duty. Whenever I get the chance, I opt to dress Parker because he is (a) two and (b) a boy. The combination of those two factors mean that I can dress him in pretty much whatever I can grab. I could send him to school wearing a blanket and a baseball cap and he would be perfectly content. Allie, on the other hand, is becoming fashion conscious, and is also really into dresses. And the few times I have tried to match her up with a dress, her mother raises the Eyebrow of Disapproval, and then asks why I have dressed Allie in a Little Mermaid outfit.

Additionally, there is the hair issue. I don't do hair. Not that I don't want to. I can't. My one attempt at putting Allie's hair in pigtails resulted in many, many tears.

I used to enjoy dressing Allie, back when she was too small to object. A quick check of pictures when she was a toddler makes it very easy to see who dressed her each day. Cute little dress, matching hair bow? Mom. Overalls, T-shirt, shoes that may or not match? Yours truly.

But I digress. So I dress Parker one day, and I actually am somewhat proud of my choice for The Dude. Looks pretty sharp, I'm thinking. We march downstairs, and the first thing my wife says is, "He doesn't match."

Now, my first reaction was to argue with her. After all, he had some snappy pants on and a slick looking shirt. Add to that his favorite shoes ever (really cool, really small work boots). To me, he looked like he hopped off the cover of Hipster Toddler Monthly. (If there is such a publication, help us all.) But rather than argue, I opted for a learning experience. After all, as far as I could tell pants + shirt = match. Not really sure how you can go wrong.

"He's got green pants and blue in his shirt," my wife said, as if she were explaining the most basic foundations of the world.

"But his shirt his red," I countered.

"With blue in it."

At this point, we just had to accept that we were at an impasse. I did the only thing I could at this point: "You know where his shirts are if you don't like it." This was not the best choice.

So I guess I will continue to go through life clueless. I don't particularly care about fashion (clearly), so I don't really feel like expending the energy to learn all of the nuances. I am happiest in a worn pair of blue jeans, a T-shirt from college, and my well-broken-in tennis shoes. But on the occasions where I have to go beyond comfort attire, I will be unfashionable. As I write this, I am wearing pleated slacks. Strike one. They are green (or olive or whatever that color is). My shirt has blue in it. Strike two, apparently. My socks? No clue. Haven't checked to see if they match yet. Strike three. I'm out. Of touch.

Happiness is chugging syrup

They call them the Terrible Twos, and frankly, I think that's just wrong.

For one thing, anyone who has had children knows that the "terrible" stage starts well before the second birthday. I guess "Terrible Nineteen Months" just doesn't have a good ring to it.

My son, Parker, is now 2-and-a-half, and he is anything but terrible. Sure, he has the occasional fits and spurts that any child has, but more than anything, I think a good adjective to describe him, like most two-year-olds, would be, well, insane. But not in a clinical way. It's in a funny way, as Parker has developed a personality that I applaud: Do things that amuse you. If it's fun, do it.

Among some of the things Parker has done for his own amusement:

1. I came over to pick him up from my parents' house the other day, and when I came in, my mother said, "I swear I did not put him in there." Yet there was Parker, perfectly content sitting in a pet carrier. (Don't worry; he had a water bowl.)

2. My wife summoned me from the den recently with, "Come look at your son." I turned the corner to find Parker seated at the table, a bottle of pancake syrup turned upright. When he saw us staring, he pulled it back (letting it drip all over of himself) and said, "YUM!!!"

3. Parker is at the age where he likes to help get dressed. Most times, he opts to put his pants on his head, and then sprints around the room laughing.

4. If it moves, it can growl. If Parker ever approaches you with a stuffed animal, it will, without a doubt, growl at you. Snakes growl. Birds growl. Fish growl. Cows growl. Old McDonald's farm, I assume, would be very growly in his world.

5. Around bedtime or naptime, Parker will often go in his room and lie down. On more than one occasion, we peek in to find out that he is not sleeping, but rather singing. While standing on his head. Sometimes naked. But when you let him know you are there, he will look over at you, say, "Hi, Daddy," and get back to his upside down naked singing.

6. Parker does not see why adults cannot have fun. For example, Parker thinks cardboard boxes are fun. Great forts. (Great place to store your growling items.) But he also finds no reason not to expect, say, Grandma to play in the cardboard box.

7. Parker can make fun out of the most mundane tasks. Laundry time? Why, the faster you get the dirty clothes into a pile, the sooner you have a landing pad for your Couch Diving exhibition. (For the record, the adults in my house were split 50-50 on whether Laundry Pile Couch Diving was acceptable.)

For some reason, as we get older, we start to become very aware of our surroundings, and very conscientious when it comes to doing something that might make us look bad in the eyes of others. Words such as "immature" and "juvenile" and "childish" are used in a derogatory manner because we adults have lumped all of this behavior as something uncalled for.

Sure, I can see why folks wouldn't want to see me chug a bottle of syrup next time I'm at breakfast. But when is the last time you sang in a grocery store? Waved at a flock of birds? Said hi to the person next to you at the stoplight? Asked your grandmother to climb inside a cardboard box? (OK, maybe the last one is crossing the line.)

In a lot of ways, I think grown-ups might be a little better off if we took some cues from this kind of behavior. After the Braves' 18th inning heartbreaker of a loss on Sunday, I was sharing misery with a couple of neighbors who are also Braves fans. As we were leaving, one said, "And Parker is just happy either way." Nice to not care about the things that don't really matter, and just enjoy life. I, for one, am going to try and adopt more of this in to my life. I hope you like how I wear my pants from now on.

College days revisited

Like many of my friends from my college, I awoke last Sunday and said, “How did I do this every weekend in college?”
Yes, I returned from a weekend visiting my college friends, and I think the word that most sums up the trip is, “Ow.”
But, it’s not the “Ow” you are probably thinking. I am more than a decade removed from college, and let’s be honest here — I think I have matured somewhat. That and my wife was there to chaperone.
My wife and I met at Alabama in 1993, and this was to be one of the biggest reunions since we left. A college fraternity brother of mine decided what we all really needed was a band party after an Alabama football game. Since he lives in New Orleans and, along with several other New Orleans brothers, is picking up the pieces of his town, we figured the guy could use a party, and it was our duty to oblige.
We rolled into town Friday night, and headed over to the fraternity house. We don’t get back to campus very often, so it’s always good to catch up with old friends. And it’s always nice to revert back to the time-honored fraternity tradition of abandoning birth names and referring to people by names such as Otter, Sloth, Biggun, Ogre and Opie. Why college students find a need to produce nicknames for people is beyond me. (Back when we first met, the first time my wife ever got my answering machine, she thought she had the wrong number, as she had never heard anyone call me Mike.) But it is strange that regardless of how big of a family someone has, how good of a job they have, how far removed from college they are, they will always be known by said nickname to their college colleagues. And it’s even stranger how easy it is to revert back to introducing yourself by a name you haven’t been called in a decade. (In case you’re wondering my nickname, keep wondering.)
That evening was spent mainly catching up on old times, and telling the stories from our day in college, I am sure to the boredom of the current house members. Granted, they exacted their revenge on at least one alumnus with an introduction to beer pong, which, based on the way he looked the next morning, he lost. (No, it was not me. Chaperone. Remember?)
We ended that evening fairly early, heading out by midnight or so. After all, the next day was the big day. Alabama versus Florida in the afternoon, followed by a band party that evening.
The game was phenomenal, with the Tide putting on a show for the ages. For those of you who watched the game, I think we can all agree that the repeated replays of Tyrone Prothro’s hideously disgusting injury were unnecessary.
The evening of the band party was one of the most anticipated alumni events in a long time. The band that was to play, Dash Rip Rock, was a favorite in college. When the first cords were struck, I, like, many others in attendance, had the same thought: Man, that is really loud.
I don’t go out very often, and when I do it is to rather subdued and quiet spots where I can hear other people talk. This was not a place where you could hear people talk. But that was not the point. The point was to revert back to college days, screaming “Roll Tide” while the band sang “Sweet Home Alabama” and doing my fine impression of dancing, which actually looks more like someone trying to balance on two bad knees and nod aggressively over and over. My wife, not surprisingly, stands far away from me on the rare occasions when I try to dance.
The band played until around two in the morning, at which point someone was kind enough to announce that it was my birthday. Several of those in attendance celebrated my birthday in the way that seemed most fitting for a fraternity party. Fortunately, I had a change of clothes in the car.
We finally got in around 4 a.m., which was WAY past our bedtime. When we woke up the next morning (or, more accurately, later than morning), neither my wife nor I had much of a voice left, some from screaming and cheering the Tide, but mostly from the band party. My throat felt as though I had tried to swallow an apple whole and it got stuck halfway down. Add to that a six-hour drive home, and you could now understand my “Ow.”
While it was great to see everyone and great to party, we commented on the way back that we were probably glad we only did this once a year. It takes a while to get geared up for this. I can’t quite do it like I could in college. I’m Mike now. That other guy only comes out once in a while.