Halloween

In honor of Halloween or shall I say "beggars in training" I am going to post the most humorous (albeit painful) memory I have from my childhood. Let me preface this with "it's ok to laugh" I can't hear you anyway.

In my youth we did not have a tremendous amount of extra money waiting to be spent on a frivolous costume. So in the name of thriftiness my mother made quite a few of our costumes. One year in the height of the "California raisins" craze my Mom decided to dress her 8 year old daughter as the famous raisin (that would be me). So picture this: A) A purple trash bag with strategically cut holes for my face, arms, and legs. B) Purple tights and a purple sweatshirt for my amazingly white legs and arms. C) A little bit of Purplish (not quite purple but not quite anything else because it was homemade) face paint. And D) A hefty amount of old newspapers to crumple and stuff the bag with so as to make me look like a raisin (oh yes it was quite a sight).

Now being a mere 8 years of age I was unaware how ridiculous I looked once she tied off the top and sent me out to collect the bounty. You have a picture of this in your head right?

Throughout the evening I noticed that adults sort of frowned and gave me more candy than the rest of the group...I was just happy to be raking in the candy! I was hotter than anything because a garbage bag with tights, sweatshirt and insulation (I mean Newspapers) RETAINS heat. As the evening wore down we made a final stop at one of my friend's house. This is were I was emotionally scared for life (did you hear dum dum dum like I did in my head?) Ok Picture this:

Innocent child waddles up to the door and rings the bell. "Nice" woman answers and frowns at the child. The typical, "Tell me what you are?" question arises and I answer in my sweet shy voice, "I'm a California Raisin". As she is heaping candy into my bag she reveals the awful truth that everyone has known all night but not said to me...YET. "Oh sweetie! No your not. Your Mama dressed you as 'white trash'!"

I burst into tears. I had stopped crying by the time I reached home and the purple tear streaked face was not even mentioned once they took the costume off. I was drenched with sweat from head to toe. "Off to the shower you go and straight into bed."

I awoke the next morning, remembered all the candy and I never mentioned it again. I am telling this story as a precautionary tale to be careful how you dress the little ones and hopefully give you a good laugh in the process.