Gooses and Ganders

Well. Webster's Word of the Day is celebrating Halloween. Today's Word is lycanthropy: the delusion that one has become a wolf. Google, of course, has entertained itself and me with the messing of its logo. In fact, that's one reason it's my home page. Letting the kids in the back room play with the logo for special events is something like driving an artcar. It takes an American icon off the pedestal and onto the lawn for a picnic.

Today is Halloween. I can see from Facebook and Walgreens that it's a big fat deal to many people. It seems to be growing like the wart on a witch's nose, but I don't know why. I know my brand-new great-niece has a costume, and she's not the only infant to have one.

As far as Mike can make me do anything, he's making me go to his veterinarian's party tonight. We thought it might be funny to go as ghosts the old-fashioned way -- with white sheets and eye-holes -- but I haven't seen a white sheet in years. I'm not sure a floral or striped ghost would fly.

I met a thirtyish man in the Halloween aisle at Walgreens yesterday. He told me his girl (his language) wanted him to go as her pimp so she could dress up "cute, y'know." Oddly, I do know. I remember wanting to be, uh, cute and Halloween seemed to be the one time a year it could be attempted. I never did, though. I didn't know how. Still don't. Tonight I'll probably toss on my nun suit and be done with it. Mike will slap his monster mask on his face, becoming a magician -- transforming a "mask" into a "costume."

Terry Washburn, a boy from high school who scared me on a hormonal level because his very presence made me want to be, um, cute, complained on Facebook that his girlfriend is making him "dress up like a chick. UGH."

There's something fundamentally wrong with "chick" coming from a sixty-year-old's mouth. However, that leads nicely into my main point, about ganders and sauces, and so we're grateful to Terry.

When I was in fifth grade, my brother Jim was in seventh, and he'd made a papier-mâché mask with one eye and one horn. It was purple. You know the song. My dad had a pair of knit pajamas -- tee-shirt material -- that were purple enough for Halloween. They were medium blue.

Jim was going as a chick, although I'm quite certain we said "woman," and if we didn't, I'll simply rewrite history and say we did.

To that end, he went out back and borrowed a bra from Bernice Recchio. She was my best friend Kathy's mom, our backyard neighbors, and she was big enough that a twelve-year-old boy could fasten her bra around his scrawny chest. Naturally, Jim stuffed the cups with toilet paper and continued with his costume.

I put on Dad's pajamas and, just as naturally, stuffed the groinal area with toilet paper and continued with my costume.

I assure you that nothing sexual was going on. I was merely filling that vacuum which Nature is said to abhor.

Alas, it turned out that we were allowed to emphasize some body parts but not others. If I'd spent fifth grade in the time of codpieces, it would have been a different story. Indeed, the thrust of the costume would have been the groin. But this was 1960 or '61, and after Mom laughed herself sick, she made me remove the toilet paper.

I've been sullen ever since.

_______________________________________

Please read the next entry, which is also for Halloween.