Halloween
My imagined approach when a cute-from-the-back dude was walking his dog-that-Sharky-would-never-get-along-with through our neighborhood right in front of me? Straight away, “Do you have a wife??” As Sharky and I got closer, I tried to work up the nerve to say something other than, “How’s it going?” but he quick-lashed around and turned to me and said, “Is he a boy?” “Yes, he is a boy,” I said, but with a little less animosity than it may seem in italics. I guess calling him a “he” to question the sex of Sharky is better than calling him an “it.” Onward. “Is your dog weird about boy dogs?” I asked, knowing the answer. “Yeah, although he’d probably be fine with your dog since he’s so small.” Wrong. Sharky would first probably lacerate your possibly beautiful ankles for assuming he’s not tough, then he would eat your dog’s face off for good measure, then he would get eaten, I thought. “Yeah, I don’t think so. Sharky is weird about boy dogs, too.” “I don’t know what it is,” the man in his Oakley sunglasses and goatee told me. Maybe that’s his Halloween costume, I thought. “Yeah, me neither, we better not risk it.” It was really hot outside. I started sweating thinking of him removing his goatee and Oakleys, and maybe that hat and his — is that a wig? — too. I’m sure he had an undershirt on underneath the shirt with all the writing on it that we could work with. I assumed for the sake of the cargo pants that he was on his way somewhere to go fishing. It’s too bad I just lost a connection with the perfect man.
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I told Sara I was going to dress Sharky up as a hang glider with a tiny kite on his back and some doggles on for Halloween and she said, “Yeah, well who is going to see him?” Womp womp. I guess that’ll have to be his costume next year when I am getting my groove back, or wait, when I have gotten my groove back, and Sharky is along for the sky ride of his life.
I’ll tell you how fun I’ve been over the years in coming up with successful costumes. I dressed up as an old lady one year when I was about 7, and I think that was my best costume ever. An old lady. It was actually pretty cute, I got to put powder in my hair and draw on a few wrinkles, mostly the ones you get when you raise your eyebrows. In college I thought I’d go all out and wrangle some friends into a group costume of paper cut-out dolls. We got some sturdy poster board and cut out sandwich board dresses and had the same poster board hair, too, then we painted our whole selves white and held hands and walked through the crowd on Frederick St., but we kept getting separated and people seemed really confused as to what we were. We were asked 800 times what we were. I thought it was obvious, “PAPER CUT-OUT DOLLS!” we kept shouting, until one disgusting boy came at us with, “What, are you guys, sperm??” and his whole probably frat friends roared with laughter. I wish I would’ve thought to say something clever like, “Well, yes, we are sperm, my son. We make life.” Or something even more clever. The next year I was a Pez dispenser and I wore all orange and had a blue collar and just put my hair up on the top of my head in a high ponytail (it was short then) so I wouldn’t have to risk the embarrassment of a tricky Halloween costume. I had thought about being a shoe, but then some of the kids I had grown up with probably would have just called me the old woman in the shoe. That is a stretch.
I hope you get all the candy you want this Halloween and only the fun tricks! Happy Happy!!!
