BIOBaby: Halloween 2009

This was Jack’s 2nd Halloween and Kali’s 11th. I must admit that I kinda live vicariously through Kali when it comes to this holiday. With her biracial looks, she’s able to pull off costumes that I could only dream about. As a little brown girl, I would never really look like Wonder Woman, Lil Orphan Annie, or Dorothy. I’d look like a little black girl dressed up as Wonder Woman, Lil Oprhan Annie and Dorothy.

Kali and I do this delicate dance every year when it comes to her costume. At first, the struggle was getting her to dress up as a character I wanted. Unless Michael Bay or someone else in Hollywood “reimagines” the shows/books/characters we grew up with, most kids today wouldn’t know who they were. If you asked a teenage boy what the General Lee was before that God-awful Jessica Simpson movie, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. And girls that Daisy Duke was a pair of coochie-cutting shorts.

Then we fought over the definition of a costume. One year, she wanted to be Hannah Montana and the “costume” consisted of a blond wig, some leggings under a mini skirt, a denim jacket and a fake microphone.

“Ma, pleeeeease?!”

“No. Kali, that’s not a costume. No one will look at you and know what you are. You’ll just look like Kali in a blond wig with really bad mall clothing!”

Now, our battle is over what is an appropriate costume. Thanks to porn, even an innocent cheerleader’s uniform takes on a sexual tone. And it doesn’t help that costume companies are tarting up the little girls’ costumes younger and younger. This year Kali wanted to be a vampire witch. That’s some shit somebody made up. Another way to add an extra few bucks to the cost of a witch costume by adding plastic fangs.

We settled on a Japanese princess costume. I kept calling it a geisha until Donny said he thought that might be a Japanese whore, and then we just stuck with Japanese princess until we knew for sure. The costume consisted of a kimono, kimono belt, and two red sticks to place in her hair. Very simple, inexpensive and extremely pretty.

Jack was a baby devil.

So, Saturday gets here and I chose then, hours before they were due to go trick-or-treating, to make them try on their costumes. Jack kinda looked like the long-lost red Teletubby. And Kali, well, Kali looked gorgeous. I was so tempted to get a burlap sack and have her go as a 5lb bag of potatoes instead. She put on some black tights and open toe flippy-floppy shoes. I put her hair in a bun, applied the sticks and even let her wear a little make up.

It was drizzling out so my Aunt and I drove the kids from house to house… at first. Then the rain let up and Kali and her friends wanted to walk so we followed behind them at a slow crawl. Hey, that’s how they roll in the suburbs. Well then Jack kept trying to jump out the window to get to his sister, so we parked the car back at my house and busted out the stroller to hoof it.

After about three houses Kali started complaining about the hair sticks and wanted to take them out. I told her no and watched as she sulked her way to the next house.

“I don’t understand why I can’t take the sticks out! They hurt!”

When she was out of earshot…

“Because the sticks make the costume. Without the sticks you are just a ten-year-old girl in a silky dress with too much makeup on. The sticks make you Japanese. Without them, it looks like I let me daughter leave the house looking like a whore!”

Two houses later, the sticks were gone. A house after that, she had changed from her shoes into pink Converses. By the time she was hitting the last few houses, the bun was gone and her hair was flowing down her back in a ponytail. It looked like I sent my child out trick-or-treating in a robe and sneakers. *sigh*

Speaking of trick-or-treating, my aunt and I realized after a few houses that the girls weren’t even saying it as doors were opened.

“Are you guys saying trick-or-treat?”

My little sister replied, “No. We just smile.”

“For the love of… are you at least saying thank you?”

Kids today do not know how to trick-or-treat and half of them weren’t wearing real costumes! Pajamas aren’t costumes, people! Stop letting your kids leave the house in them.

The next day, Kali was walking around the house in her kimino with it unbelted. It looked like a silk robe. With her underwear peeking through she looked like that character that opens the door on an Law and Order: SVU episode. You know what I’m talking about. Stabler and Benson go to interview “a lady of the night” and she answers the door with her open robe, a cigarette in one hand, and a drink in the other.

“Girl, if you don’t put some clothes on!!”

Halloween will be the death of me.