Halloween costumes have a way of benchmarking our personal history. We remember our past as “the year I was a werewolf,” “that was the Star Wars year” (what year isn’t?) or “the year I was a rock-and-roll star.” We are all on a perennial quest for the perfect costume — the one that best summarizes something about who we are at the time or who we would like to be in our fantasy lives. And it’s a never-ending quest: I still feel the impulse. Costuming is serious business with a lot of pressure. It’s no less so now than the year I was a pirate and couldn’t quite pull off the costume exactly as I had imagined. Devastating. Disappointment. Heartbreak. That was fourth grade. It’s still like that. Halloween is a childhood do-over — repetition of heartbreak or final victory.
Even when I became a teacher, there were years of epic success and failure. My favorite costume, so far, was the year I came to school as The Devil in a Blue Dress. I raided the drama department costume closet for a size 18, sky blue cocktail dress — with sequins. The rest was shamefully easy — just the red plastic devil horns-and-pitchfork set from Wal-Mart and I was set. I even had a real goatee at the time. So scary.
Then there was the year my friend Jonathan dressed up like Dracula. He was the principal. I learned an important lesson about the downside to this adult free pass at a childhood do-over. He took it too far, and he was costumed a little too perfectly: swallowtail tuxedo and opera cape, whitened face, fangs, gouts of blood at the corner of his mouth and dark eye shadow. We might as well have had Bela Lugosi leading the assembly. Too scary. Way too scary.
The first-grade teacher — a tasteful, innocent Bo Peep that year — could have strangled him because she had to spend the rest of the day wiping away the tears of her traumatized 6-year-old clowns, superheroes and Ninja Turtles and counseling them about their principal’s aberrant sense of humor. So for Halloween the next year he was a 6-foot-tall fuzzy rabbit. Sometimes it’s best to defy expectations in a warm and cuddly way.
My search goes on. There really is a perfect costume. I just know it. And each year gives us a chance at a redo. I might give that pirate theme another whirl. I’m still stinging from the fourth-grade debacle.
Todd R. Nelson is principal of the Brooksville Elementary School.