All For A Few Pieces of Candy

I don’t know if it was because I was dressed as a pirate for 90% of my Halloween trick-or-treating outings (the other 10% were spent outfitted in my school clothes and a horrendous two headed monster mask that I begged my dad for from Wal-Mart), or if I can chalk it up to that missing lobe of my brain used for rational thinking, but I have an uncanny knack for horrible Halloween costume ideas. This has come to my attention more and more over the last five years after meeting and now being married to a Halloween birthday girl. This once fairly insignificant celebration of all things dead and/or chocolate has now become one of the main focal points of our year. All year we store up ideas for costumes. Whether they are celebrities, animals, heroes or gods, mine are consistently the worst. I thought it would be nice to document some of these horrible ideas and maybe you could reply with some of yours..a real opportunity for me to stop feeling alone in my lapse of good judgment. First, about two or three years ago, my good friend Jason, from the now defunct Christopher Pizza, found himself costumeless Halloween evening. We had plans of heading over to East Nashville and bar hopping with a small group of friends. Jason, single at the time, made the mistake of asking me my opinion on what he could pull together in a few hours. My suggestion was “All Dressed Up With No Place to Go.” I informed him all he had to do was, put on a handsome suit and carry around a map and look lost all evening. I thought this would be a prime opportunity for him to be approached all night by lovely women asking him something like, “hey good looking, what are you supposed to be?” The possible responses were endless! Unfortunately, he spent most of the evening with a menacing look on his face, cornered into a booth with his map on the table, most likely plotting out revenge. The next major mistake I made was last year when I suggested that Rebecca and I go as a girl scout and a “girl scout.” She could wear her old uniform and I could dress up as a slime ball/guido with a clip board, rating girls all night. Again, my plan went down in flames. The joke was usually lost in translation or folks found me a tad too creepy. I could tell you about the time I was a fanny-pack, Branson hat wearing tourist, or my idea to be a Tennessee Titan (toga, lightning bolt, handle bar mustache and mullet), or my idea to wrinkle my shirt, mess my hair and put some brown make up on my face, people would ask “What are you, some sort of mess.” And I would reply, “no, I’m the financial bail-out plan,” but I think you are beginning to understand, I wasn’t made for Halloween, costume parties or maybe even the visual arts.