Garbage Bag or Halloween Costume?

My mother is not the creative type; she will be the first to admit to this, so our Halloween costumes were either hand-me-downs from cousins, repeat offenders, or something my mother threw together last minute.

We never won a prize at the local costume judging in Oakfield. (Andrew Greshhammer always won; his mom was good with a needle. I remember how jealous I was when he came out in his full head-to-toe scarecrow costume from The Wizard of Oz.) Nothing my mother dressed us in could even compare. I had been . . .

a ghost, yes, just a white sheet with two holes in front (more than once)

a hobo, Dad’s plaid shirt and old cotton Grande factory gloves with the finger tips cut off

a punk rocker, Mom’s black leather bike jacket and a whole big can of pink hair spray

a hunter, rolled up Dad’s camouflage, painted my face, and Jenny put a fake bullet in my head . . . this was probably the most elaborate costume just because of the bullet . . . I carried one of my sister’s old bows, without the arrows of course.

The best costume my mother ever put one of us in was Jesse. I remember walking up to the first house in Oakfield as the old woman clutching the large bowl of candy stared at my brother, 2 or 3 at the time, as he shuffled up the drive, holding my mother’s hand. With each step he made a swish swish sound as if someone was following him closely from behind sweeping up his foot prints.

The old woman glanced from my brother to the corner of her lawn and then to my brother again as if she was trying to distinguish between two things. As my brother dipped his hand into her bowl for a candy bar, she looked at my mother, “That is a very interesting costume. I would have never thought of that.”

“Didn’t cost a thing,” my mother replied, proud of her so-called creativity.

“No, I would say not,” the woman said.

Jesse was the perfect size for the pumpkin printed garage bags that people used to put their raked leaves in to use as lawn decoration, the ones sitting the old woman’s lawn.

“And I may not be able to reuse the bag, but the newspaper inside is still good, a little wrinkled, but good,” my mother smiled. . . . My brother was a garbage bag, but a cute, cheap little garbage bag none the less.

I laugh now, but I will probably wrap my kids in tinfoil and have them go as leftovers; oh, and then still reuse the tinfoil . . . a little crinkled but still good.