Eek, What to Wear??

So here we are on Halloween.  It’s the first full day I’m back in the country after the honeymoon, and I’m sad to report that The Husband and I don’t get his kids for the holiday, so there’s not a lot of happy dress up talk going on in our house.  While I am very sad not to have the kids, I am slightly less sad that I don’t have to go through the angst of coming up with a Halloween costume.  I find this incredibly stressful.  There is a tremendous pressure to be clever, particularly when one is a writer and/or claims to be an intellectual.  It may be self-imposed, but it’s still there.

My default costume was adapted from a reference in the movie The Addams Family (teehee).  I wear regular clothes (hooray!) and don’t carry anything special.  When people ask me what I am, I solemnly reply: “I’m a serial killer.  We look like everyone else.”

How great is that??

Feel free to use it, by the way. You don’t even have to attribute your cleverness to me.  😉

In case you don’t want to use it, here are a few other suggestions I’ve come up with that are extremely minimally invasive/effort-intensive/embarrassment-laden and designed to show you off as intellectual and clever, bebing as they are derive from literature, non-fiction and/or literary reference:

• Invisible Man: Dress any way you want and walk around all evening with one hand held out at an angle like you are holding hands with someone.  Tell everyone you are escorting the Invisible Man and for goodness’ sake to not walk so close or they’ll step on him!
• Rejection Letter Personified: Take a plain white t-shirt and write on it: “We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your manuscript at this time.”  Include check boxes that say “Please do” and “Please do NOT” followed by “consider submitting additional material and/or revisions at a later date.”  Then walk around and glower condescendingly at everyone you see and refuse to explain yourself.  😉
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Take a stuffed panda and attach a toy water gun to one hand and a twig of leaves to the other; wear any clothes you like and carry the panda around while correcting everyone’s grammar all night.  (teehee, if you don’t catch the reference, make SURE to check out Lynne Truss’s fantastically snarky book by the same title)
• Freudian Slip: Take your favorite slip dress and write little Freudian quotes or terms (e.g., penis envy, Oedipus Complex, oral fixation) on small bits of paper and pin them to the dress.
• The Time Traveler’s Wife: Dress any way you want and spend the night going “HENRY!  Where are you?” while carrying around a pile of men’s clothes/shoes.  (another fabulous book – made into a perilously mediocre movie, in my opinion…)

Good luck – and feel free to share pictures and/or stories about your Halloween experience here…  I love hearing about other people’s costume (and non-costume) ideas!! 😉