It’s hard to believe that it’s almost Halloween again. It seems like it was just a few months ago I was chasing an overly-excited 5-year-old trick-or-treater down the street with a 2-year-old bouncing on my hip.
Henry was SO excited for trick-or-treating last year. I feel like 5 is the best trick-or-treating age. He understood what was going on and he was prepared. He picked out his costume far in advance. He wanted to be Groot because he’s the coolest kid ever. I had the magic of Amazon at my fingertips, and I showed him a Groot costume. He jumped up and down in excitement. I added it to my virtually overflowing cart and it was on our doorstep two days later. If only it was that easy when I was little.
We didn’t get store-bought costumes when I was a kid. We had to be creative and make our costumes. Or I could wear my sister’s hand me downs because she was the first kid and they bought new things for her.
When I was about 6 years old, I decided that I wanted to give dance class a try. My mom enrolled me at Johnson’s Dance and let’s just say that I was BAD. I was not a naturally talented dancer. My parents never let me quit anything though, so I finished out the session and performed in the recital, where we danced to the song “Joyful, Joyful” because Sister Act was the jam at that time.
Here’s the kicker—our costumes were nun costumes. The recital was in June, so when Halloween rolled around in October, I started talking to my mom about what I wanted to be for Halloween. I think I wanted to be a piece of fruit, maybe? Something extremely random I’m sure because that’s my specialty. I knew there would be some arts and crafts involved and I would need her glue gun. (The one she used to glue the shoulder pads in her shirts.)
She straight-up looked me in the eyes like a savage and told me no, that she paid a lot of money for that nun costume in June and I was getting my money’s worth out of it.
I gasped. I WENT TO CATHOLIC SCHOOLS! I couldn’t just dress like a nun for Halloween. People would think I was being serious because when you are 6 and taught by nuns, you don’t dress up like them for a joke. They were legit and very serious.
I seriously cried. My mom did not care. My first tactic didn’t work. She was dead set on this.
A few weeks later, I went trick or treating with all of my friends dressed as a nun. I am 98% sure they made fun of me and so many moms told me that my mom must be so proud. Yeah, she was so proud that she got her money’s worth out of a nun costume.
So as we order our children’s Halloween costumes this year, let’s say a little prayer for 6-year-old Jamie and remember how amazing it is that we can get a costume for our child in two days for $15.99 with free shipping. And we didn’t even have to use a glue gun. Our parents weren’t that lucky.
