Halloween is only 20 days away. I will begin celebrating about 17 nights from now, and I'm beginning to do some serious thinking about my costume.
There are only two qualifications for a good Halloween costume. It must be warm (or at least look cute while you're freezing your ass off), and you have to be able to have a wide range of motion while it's on, just in case something goes down and you need to move in a hurry.
Last year, I tried to keep these qualifications in mind when deciding on a costume, but it was tough. I eventually threw caution to the wind and just picked something I liked, so I went as a California Raisin. I put on my bright red shoes, wore a garbage bag filled with balloons, slapped on some sunglasses and carried a microphone. I might not have been very agile, but am I ever? I figured that if I were to get caught in a melee on State Street that I would just hunker down and hope that the 30 balloons surrounding my mid-region would save me.
Luckily, I avoided any trouble that weekend, but my costume was far from a success. When people saw me in an oversized garbage bag with sunglasses and carrying a microphone, the first thing they yelled at me was \Missy Elliott, what an awesome costume."" I tried to tell them that I was not dressed as the famous rap diva, but my efforts were useless. The rest of the night, I could be found answering to Missy and telling people to keep their hands off my ""ba-donka dunk dunk.""
The worst part of my Halloween costume situation is that I can think of costumes for other people and not for myself. For example, want something from television? Any guy with a suit and a rose could go as ""The Bachelor."" Or a girl with a test tube and a pantsuit could be from ""CSI."" On the school supply side of things, you could dress in yellow, slap some duct tape to your back and be a post-it. For even less work, put a lampshade on your head and be a desk lamp. If you're into politics, dress as George W. Bush and have your burly friends walk behind you dressed as Secret Service agents. And if you're feeling a tad irreverent, have one person dress as a weapon of mass destruction and have him evade Dubya all night. The ideas would be endless, if only I could pull them off.
Briefly, I thought about resurrecting some of my old costumes from elementary school. The only problem with this plan is that all of the costumes of my youth were considerably clunky. I was a mailbox, a dining room chair, a marionette puppet, and the pi??ce de r??sistance, a hot air balloon. Needless to say, I will not be caught dead with a 24-inch balloon strapped to my shoulders. That's like a wearing a homing beacon that attracts drunken obnoxious people.
I guess in the scheme of things, this really doesn't matter. Most people are too wasted to notice or care what their own costume is, let alone mine. So if you are trying to find me on Halloween, I'll be the one dressed as an uncreative college student.
Erin is a sophomore majoring in education. Her column runs every Monday in The Daily Cardinal. She can be reached at erincanty8285@hotmail.com.
