We all wear Halloween disguises
Abigail Wheetley
Feckless Pondering
I always knew that I was going to become a sayer of things like, "Well, when I was a kid..." and on Halloween I can't help myself. When I was a kid, the only children with store-bought costumes were those whose parents cared little or had no time to help them get something else together. The costumes were terrible, usually a plastic smock with a picture of what you wanted to be on the front and an adult-size mask that was as unattractive as it was uncomfortable.
The ones with such costumes would lurk apologetically while the rest of us strutted in our finery. One Halloween I was a fairy princess, with my mother's old dresses cut to fit and a tinfoil crown. Another year I was Peter Pan (unfortunately, I was mistaken for the Jolly Green Giant; ho, ho, ho), and one year I outdid my classmates with a paper mache panda head and handmade costume to match. Children would walk up to one another and ask "What are you supposed to be?" and then I could explain. "These tissues balled up under my sleeves are muscles" or "My face is white because I am dead, and my mouth is red because I eat brains." The costume was more than a disguise; it was a whole identity, a new story and a new way of behaving. The boys dressed as creeps and monsters were allowed to chase the girls dressed as princesses and good witches.
I loved those costumes, and I loved that whatever I wanted could become possible with my mother's skills and my imagination. Now I am an adult and have accepted that my mother's craftiness was not passed down. My children, terrible as it makes me feel, have store-bought costumes. The first year I took my son to the Halloween store I was amazed that the outfits are now made of cloth, and the plastic masks are gone for the most part. The prices are reasonable, and the costumes last. Now my son can be a Power Ranger, and my daughter can be Snow White. Suddenly anything is possible.
I can't say that this doesn't unsettle me a little. No other child will be impressed with my son's likeness to the leader of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. They could have chosen that suit instead of Superman or Spiderman. No doubt the real contest is what identity is in vogue and how cool one is compared to the other. Where parents with little time and energy used to simply make their children into clowns, or tramps, or ghosts, (one year there were no white sheets to sacrifice, and so I was given a flowered one and topped it off with a hat and purse and went as the ghost of spring) we all now make a trip to Wal-Mart and call it a day.
In this same way I see my own future, coming now to the end of my undergraduate career. I will go to graduate school and hope to one day teach or work in publishing. My costume is still my own. I have created it and am choosing the elements that lend it the most authenticity. One may ask, "What are you supposed to be?" and I can answer, "Well, this degree could get me a teaching position, but the experience in newspapers could put me into journalism, and my mouth is red because I eat brains."
Medical school students have the coolest costume because it's so immediately recognizable. They have scrubs and a whole language all their own. Once we know what they are, they can field medical questions or tell us a few scary stories. Philosophy majors are hard to spot, but once they show you how their costumes work you wonder why you didn?t spot that before. The pale skin, the eyes that seem to see through you; they actually pull it off very well. The plant biology majors have to have their classmates to bring it together convincingly. They travel in groups with their wire-rimmed glasses and nondescript clothing and project the sense that they know a great deal.
The daily costume party will come to an end when we enter the real world, with our Halloween hangovers, and find that our real identities don't match up with our costumed alter egos. Maybe the real truth is that we will wear the store-bought costumes, look over the rack and grab "stock market executive" or "publishing coordinator" and know that few will want or need further explanation, and our faces will be lost behind our impressively stitched outerwear. I want to remain the young and brilliant writer/talented undergrad forever but fear that I will soon be sitting in a cubical looking over files of other people's writing, growing older and thinking, "When I was younger..."
Abigail Wheetley's comments do not necessarily reflect those of the DAILY EGYPTIAN
Copyright 2009 - Daily Egyptian
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