Halloween Skirmish

This year my kids won what they consider a major victory in the kids-vs.-mom wars. For years, I've held my ground against what I consider to be "scary" Halloween costumes. My reasoning was that our family doesn't "do" gory movies like Scream or Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, so why should we dress up like characters from those movies when there are so many other choices out there? No blood, no axes, no chainsaws. Not now, not ever.

For years, our compromise was: Ninjas. Ninjas fell somewhere in the middle between cartoony-superheroes and ultra-cool-scary-masks. Ninja costumes came in a variety of colors and decorations, they had cool face covers, and they carried swords. Mom liked the historical connection. Kids liked the bad-guy connection. Everyone was happy.

But this year, ninjas weren't right either. So we stood in the aisle at the costume store for a long, long time. The pickings were slim. They didn't want superheroes, which I understood - it's hard to feel cool as a 12-year-old Batman when the 4-year-old neighbor next door has the same getup. They're not quite mature enough to see the humor in dressing up like a garbage pail or a gorilla, like a college kid might do. And they'd been ninjas forever and forever. Except for the Lord of the Rings year. Which meant that the only section left for us was... Horror.

So I thought, and I thought. And I thought, well, they're preteen boys. With only a scant few years left before people start looking funny at them for trick-or-treating at all. I do understand the desire to be "cool." And, there were a few choices in Horror that weren't Scream or Jason or Freddy. Or bloody.

So we settled on the Evil Jester (with the mask with a wicked grin) and the Crypt Monster (with the creepy chestplate and horns on his head). There was still no blood, still no tie-ins to silly plot-less no-brainer Hollywood drivel. But they were SCARY.

(I did tell them they were not allowed to make scary noises at the little kids. And, to their credit, they looked at me as if I'd told them not to set their own hair on fire. You know the look, the one that says, "Of course not, Mom, what kind of morons do you think we are?")

I think the costumes were a success. They each came home with about 50 pounds of candy apiece, which they'll probably devour in secret in less than 3 days.

Pictures are forthcoming. As soon as I figure out where I put my camera.

P.S. The cutest costume I saw all night was a little boy who'd made his own Spongebob outfit out of a cardboard box. It was AWESOME. He used exactly the right shades of poster paint and he made a paper nose that stuck out just like the Bob's does. He was So. Cute.