When it comes to sickeningly sweet Halloween treats, Pixy Stix have little on a four year old mermaid princess. The trick is to keep the latter from ingesting too much of the former.
To ensure a happy Halloween this year, we caved to corporate costume pressure. No more trademark free furry felines or characters crafted from the public
domain of thrift stores and fabric shops. Instead, our little girl wanted to be a certain Disney Princess with a fin. So we indulged her trick-or-treat fancy — albeit with a Little Mermaid knockoff.
Naturally this costume choice didn't materialize out of thin air, but from a two-story billboard. On a recent family trip to California, everywhere we turned there was a larger than life advertisement for the DVD release of this under the sea entrancement. It didn't take long before the insidious Mickey Mouse industry had its claws into Ella. Curse you cryonic Walt Disney!
Suffice it to say, I begrudgingly put the flipper fin costume in our shopping cart last week. Aside from feeling like a sell-out, I had to suppress the parental urge to nudge the costume choice into the realm of practicality. "Hey, how about this flame-retardant, thermal-lined, glow-in-the-dark, no-tail-to-trip-over, only-one-piece-of-candy-for-me girl in a coat costume," suggested daddy. I even tried the hard sell on a -30 degree rated teddy bear getup, but realized how pathetic the words sounded coming from a mouth that once enjoyed extracting the gelatin marrow from Wax Lips.
As I pushed the shopping cart — muttering something about mermaid costumes not being allowed north of the Mason-Dixon line in October — it marked yet another step into the black abyss of parental guidance. Perhaps to delay the inevitable decent into the realm of responsibility, the Peter Pan in me purchased 'The Freaks Come Out at Night' T-shirt from the clearance rack. Further proof that I only have a size 9 1/2 retro Converse Chuck Taylor toe hold on perceived coolness.
So this past weekend my wife and I escorted our little mermaid to a pre-Halloween party in our subdivision teeming with pint-size super heroes and cartoon characters. There were plenty of lions, tigers and oh, my word bears running around on pure adrenaline and processed sugar. Throw in caramel apples, cakes, flavored popcorn and a sack race, and you have a volatile mix made for home video. Any opportunity to dust off our camera lens was compromised by the fact that mermaids weren't built for sack races or pumpkin rolling — at least not on land.
However, the Texas oil executive trophy wife wig that came with Ella's costume did keep her ears warm.
Of course the fact that Ella actually has a Halloween costume before October 31 puts her yards of taffeta ahead of my costume wearing days. Not that I ever wore taffeta — not that there's anything wrong with that. Instead, the highlight of Halloween was the "guess who waited until the last-minute to make a costume so I'm going as a ghost again" all-school parade. The other "hurry before the school bus arrives" standbys were the straight-leg Wranglers cowboy or a motley clown created from bad Father's Day ties and a big collar dress shirt.
Then there was the one Halloween I went to school dressed as Don Adams from his cartoon appearance as a ghost exterminator on an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Don't ask — just blame it on the '70s.
Thankfully, Ella won't have to explain herself while trick-or-treating with her cousin this year. Although his parents are still trying to work out of the bugs of making a boy ladybug costume. No matter what, they'll both be sickeningly sweet.
However, a decade from now when our daughter wants to go out as a zombie French maid, it will take more than Pixy Stix to
suppress the parental urge
of practicality.
Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or email gleiva@gtherald.com.