Making Spooky Halloween Costumes

(Updated from the Lakeside Review, October 12, 1983)    

Once upon a midnight dreary,

While I pondered weak and weary

Over many a Halloween costume get-up,

Suddenly, I felt quite fed up.

“Somehow, I said, (in a tone less than lenient),

“I’ve got to make Halloween more convenient.”

     That was last year.  This year, I went ahead and did it—came up with an ingenious line of easy Halloween disguises guaranteed to scare the apple cider out of anyone.  Each costume is based on a simple leotard and appropriate make-up, props, or accessories.

Pin Cushion: Decorate the front of a bright red leotard with a random pattern of straight pins.

Voodoo Doll:  Same as above with a black leotard. 

Tossed Salad:  Rinse hair in a mixture of vinegar and olive oil before donning a green leotard.  Carry salad tongs.

Crayon:  Wear a red leotard and tights.  Add a matching, cone-shaped, construction paper  hat.  Dip soles of shoes in red  paint just before leaving the house.

Ballpoint Pen:  See “Crayon.”  Black leotard, blue hat and paint. Carry a spiral notebook.

Purple People Eater:  Purple tights and leotard.  Grip a rubber Barbie Doll between front teeth.

Skunk:  Tack a length of white satin ribbon to the back of a black leotard.  Employ a perfume atomizer filled with broccoli water. 

Bumble Bee:  Wrap yellow ribbon stripes around a black leotard.  Pull a gathering thread tightly through a doubled rectangle of nylon net and attach to shoulders for wings.  Carry a loaded dart gun.

Lemon Meringue Pie:  Yellow leotard and tights.  Spray face with shaving cream.

Mad Dog:  Same as above with brown leotard and tights.  Growl as you walk.

Doggie Doo:  Brown leotard and matching cone-shaped hat.  Paint face brown.  Carry a full pooper scooper.

Skinned Knee:  Flesh-colored leotard and tights.  Using adhesive tape, fasten large gauze bandage to tummy.  Dribble with ketchup.

Fried Egg:  White leotard and tights.  Attach an orange felt "yolk" to tummy.

Little Jack Horner:  Any colored leotard.  Paint thumb purple. 

Donald Trump:  Same as above, except paint face red, instead of thumb.  Wear an orange wig and a red tie.  Continuously touch index finger to thumb to create a circle.  

                                             

TRIP WITHOUT KIDS? MAKE THAT A GUILT TRIP

Ever noticed how adept children are at making their parents feel guilty?

Take my friend Karla, for example.  She learned this the hard way, when I wandered into her kitchen, as she sat across the breakfast table from her daughter Tina.

"Don't get up, Karla," I said, opening the screen door and letting myself in, as she continued a rather animated conversation with her daughter Tina.

"You mean you're going to Las Vegas without me?"  Tina spluttered.  "You mean you and Daddy are going to take a trip 450 miles from home, and you're not going to take me?  You mean you're going to leave your own flesh and blood daughter in the clutches of a babysitter?"

"Hands, not clutches," Karla interjected.  "The sitter has very competent hands with which she'll fix your meals, get you off to school each morning, and see that you have plenty to do."

"And at night she'll make me languish alone in my room watching shadows on the wall, while you and Daddy enjoy the bright lights in another country!"

"Another country?  Since when is Las Vegas another country?"

"Since Daddy said it was.  Just yesterday Daddy said, 'Las Vegas is another country--a foreign one!'

"Just think of all the educational benefits you'll be depriving me of if you go to a foreign country without me."

"Depriving you of educational benefits?  I guess that's what we did when we took you to Mexico and Canada this year!  Not to mention Disneyland. 

"Your dad and I deserve a little time on our own. 

"Depriving you?  That's one guilt trip I'm just not going to take."

"Oh, yes you are," Tina exalted. "And you'll go on that one without me, too!"

PARENTING: WITH KIDS, IT’S THE LITTLE (ALMOST INVISIBLE) THINGS THAT COUNT

Two bar stools sit side by side at the counter of our kitchen snack bar.  Hardrock maple with spindled backs, the chairs are a matched pair--identical, except for an almost invisible chip in the back leg of one.

And somehow in the scheme of things, that chair, with its microscopic irregularity, has imprinted on 4-year-old Matthew's mind.  As sure as a duckling is of its mother, our son is of his chair.

Easygoing Christie, at two, couldn't care less where she sits at lunch time, as long as there's food in front of her.  But, Matt is devastated if his little sister happens to land on the chipped-leg chair.

"Christie's got my chair!"  His wailing could rival the noon whistle.

"It's okay, Matt Matt," we try to soothe his utter sense of violation.  "She's not going to keep it.  But couldn't she just sit there this one time, since she's already dipped into her soup?"

"No way!"  he cries.  "It's my stool!"  The little guy is not to be consoled.  His father and I exchange knowing looks.  There is nothing to do but switch stools and soup bowls.  Dave lifts Matthew and Christie, while I move the stools.

The dishes are harder.  Matt's brimming bowl slops Campbell's Bean with Bacon on his place mat, and because no one can decide who drank out of which glass--one of them has breadcrumbs on the rim--both must be exchanged for new.

Finally, with Matthew settled on his self-proclaimed throne, we sit down hoping to salvage some warmth from our rapidly cooling meal.  With the clinking of spoons, a welcome respite from the previous moment's commotion, I scan my children's faces.  Jennifer, Stacee, Mike, Christie.  Each child is intent upon the business of noisy slurping--each child, except Matthew.

"For Heaven's sake!  What's the matter now?  Why aren't you eating, Little Guy?"

"Christie,"  he raises his head to hiccough.  "Christie has my spoon!"

How does he know?

My eyes dart from the little boy's mournful eyes to the steel gray utensil held firmly in his younger sister's dimpled hand.  Sure enough, a microscopic fleck of rust dots the tip of the handle piece.

FAMILY: GOURMET DINOSAUR LIVES BENEATH THE KITCHEN SINK

Yes, any two-year-old knows this isn't a brontosaurus,
but when you're using clip art, you can't be picky!

It wasn’t until after we had called the plumber for the third time that I realized we had a gourmet garbage disposer in our kitchen sink.

How else could I explain the fact that it upchucked grisly offerings of amputated chicken tails or oily fish heads and swallowed comparatively palatable tidbits like leftover strawberry shortcake and pineapple tapioca without a problem?

Red potato peels went down smoothly, but the grimy brown remains of Idaho russets became a gurgling clog.

My five-year-old son Michael thought he understood.  “There’s a monster in there,” he deadpanned the first time he watched a spoon disappear into that mysterious cavity, only to see it emerge again flipping halfway across the counter in the twisted shape of a stainless steel pretzel.

Later, as his imagination began to work overtime Michael’s monster became a dinosaur.  “A brontosaurus,” Mikey said.

“You have to give him water,” he told his best friend, David Shelley.  David’s carrot-colored hair accentuated a sudden pallor in his cheeks, as Michael, under my supervision, fed the formidable creature pungent grapefruit rinds and coagulated oatmeal clumps.

Before the day was over, though, I would repent of my misguided efforts to entertain those two kids.

Michael and David had seemed unusually quiet as they played in the backyard for half the afternoon.  Before I could shriek, “What on earth?”, they were trailing in savaged bits of embryonic endive, underdeveloped onions, and a tangled mass of snow-pea vines, not to mention an ill-fated earthworm at least three-feet long.

There was nothing to do but stoically feed the whole mess, minus the worm, to that gluttonous creature beneath the sink. 

“Brontosaurs are vegetarians,” I told those watchful little boys.

The next morning, with a more than nostalgic longing for the “good old days” when people wrapped their garbage in newspaper columns like this one, I called the plumber again.

Sharon Nauta Steele

May 21, 1982

The Lakeside Review

SHOPPING: WHAT'S THE APPROPRIATE FORM OF IDLE CHITCHAT FOR GROCERY CHECK-OUT TIME?

Standing in the grocery store checkout line, I racked my brain for an appropriate topic of conversation.

"There's no need to break out in a cold sweat just because the man in front of you has already thoroughly discussed the weather with both the bagger and the checker," I told myself. "After all, there are plenty of other things you can make your obligatory small talk about, while your groceries are being scanned and bagged."

"Sure there are," the frozen chicken in my cart seemed to say. "You could always ask the bagger how his love life is going."

I quickly put the chicken down on the conveyor belt and pulled a tabloid from a nearby display rack. If I could pretend to be genuinely interested in finding out how a famous movie star had contracted deadly feline leukemia from her Yorkshire Terrier, I might not have to even open my mouth, except to say "Thank you" at the end.

But, just when I got to the part where the dying actress was planning to be buried with her dog (which having already passed on, was patiently waiting in the freezer until the funeral could be held), the clerk leaned over and asked me if I was going to buy the magazine,

Surrendering my reading material, I took a deep breath, and looked that checker straight in the eye.

"Nice outfit you're wearing. Did you make it yourself?"

"Actually no," she smirked, with a gesture indicating that every employee in the store was wearing exactly the same company-issued vests and trousers.

The conversation further deteriorated when I mumbled something about the uniforms being very attractive anyway and she began making gagging sounds.

After that it was all downhill. The checker seemed to take it personally when I mentioned the price of hamburger was up five cents a pound, and when I asked the bagger which was worse for the environment, paper or plastic, he said, "Both."

"Oh well," I finally broke down, "this weather sure is nice."

"Yup!" the two grocery store employees chimed in together. "Do you think it's going to rain?"

Sharon Nauta Steele

THE DESERET NEWS

December 27, 1991