Saturday, November 01, 2008

trick-or-treating

This year just-turned-six Lucy chose to be Hannah Montana and, instead of having a painstakingly home sewn costume created by her loving mother, buy a cheesy prefab costume at the store. Nine year-old Iris opted to be the Grim Reaper, a costume about which I was skeptical but which turned out adorable, with a polyester hooded robe, skeletonish gloves and a plastic scythe. I urged Iris when trick-or-treating to play up the death aspect. "Tell them that Death shall pass over them this year."

Death and I were separated from Hannah Montana and her father (not in a Billy Ray Cyrus outfit, thankfully) for much of the evening, as Hannah had strong ideas about where to trick-or-treat. Eventually we all met up again and went home, where the children poured out their candy in an ecstasy of gluttony. Lucy picked through her candy critically, pulling out all the dark chcolates to give to her father (a neighborhood gourmand had given out tiny, organic dark chocolate squares). She picked up a dollar bill and made a face of disgust. "One guy didn't have any candy, so he gave me a dollar and said for me to buy my own candy!" I thought getting a dollar instead of a "fun-sized" candy bar was a good deal, but not Lucy. "And you can have my raisins!" she said with vehemence. The other irritation for Lucy had been a troubling thirst. "I never want to feel like that again!"

This morning, rather than rejoice in her massive pile of candy, Lucy felt traumatized by the thirst of the evening before. Ironically enough the Sober Husband was the only one given a beverage. One neighbor had pressed a plastic cup of red wine onto him. I had been promised a Cosmopolitan by a group of older gay men who were delighted with Death ("Who did your make-up???") and "Death's Mother", but in the event we came away only with a handful of candy.

Iris, even with her own mighty stash of candy, lusts for Lucy's and kept trying to talk her out of various candies. "Lucy, you wouldn't like THIS one. Lucy, I think this kind is poisoned!"

"None of her candy is poisoned, and if it's so poisonous, why do you want to eat it?" Iris just glowered, her eyes still bearing traces of the Grim Reaper's deadly eye make-up.

4 comments:

Leslie said...

One of my daughters was so creative with her costume...she went as a lesbian undead bride.

Yup. You read that right.

But at least she's 15. Pictures over at my place.

Missy said...

My 16 year old went as Miley Cyrus with her blond friend as Hannah Montana. Frankly, they looked about the same as usual, but with more eye make up. The younger one went as a flapper, and that was so gosh darned cute.

The cutest outfit I saw all night was a littel drum major/twirler costume. You could tell it was an expensive costume and complete right down to real little white boots and the serious felt hat. I asked the little girl if she could really twirl and she said..."Kinda!"

You should post some photos of Little Miss Death. :-)
Missy

Carol Ann said...

We had a really cute little Indiana Jones at our house: battered leather jacket, fedora, bullwhip.

Epiphany said...

Hey, that's a good extortion tactic for Halloween: "give me candy, or death will be back for you!"

I'd hand over the candy.

My favorite costume (very adult) was a guy who was one of the guys from the "Dick in a Box" video!