It’s that fabulous time of year when we encourage children to dress up and go beg strangers for sugar! While many people spend all year plotting and constructing their elaborate Oscar-worthy costumes, others…don’t. In fact, they probably completely forgot until right before they walked out the door. But necessity is the mother of invention. So here are some of our favorite “Mom, I need a costume for school today!” moments.
A little girl waltzed into my class on Oct 31 wearing a green hat and a red dress with a piece of construction paper stapled to it and the word Siracha scrawled in black magic marker. Well played mom, well played!
I worked at a school where they believed in forced fun for the staff. We were required to wear a costume every day the week of Halloween to build “school spirit.” Most people got into it but our tech support guy was not amused. Every day people would give him grief for not wearing a costume so he finally capitulated: a white t-shirt with the words “Error 404-Costume Not Found” written on it in marker.
I had the cutest little boy in my kindergarten class. His parents were both very busy professionals but didn’t have a nanny or regular babysitter to help so they were often, shall we say, forgetful about some of the less important elements of school life. The child was always clean and had his lunch and was generally happy, so he wasn’t neglected. It was just that little things often slipped through the cracks. On Halloween, he came into class wrapped from shoulder to knee in tin foil. I asked him what he was and he started to cry. “I’m a baked potato and I am so hot in this!”
There was a little red-headed boy in my class who came to our Halloween party with a bag of wonder bread tied around his neck. “I’m the gingerbread man!” he proclaimed proudly.
A child came to the Halloween party carrying a box of corn flakes with a fork stuck in it and what I think was ketchup spilled on the box. He was a “cereal killer.” I didn’t know if I should be disturbed or laugh.
A boy in my class had a mom who traveled a lot for work so dad often took care of day-to-day stuff. He was a really nice guy and a super attentive father but he had an interesting sense of humor. For Halloween, he sent his youngest son to class in a giant gift wrapped box with a tag on it that said:
Our director spent 30 minutes trying to explain that while she could see how this might be considered funny by some people, it was not appropriate for school.
We had a family at our school who were massive Comicon fans. Their family vacation every year was to the big festival in California and they had an entire room in their house dedicated to constructing and designing amazing family costumes. I was super excited to see what they would come up with for Halloween. Their daughter came to class in a black t-shirt with two red triangles duct-taped to it in the Black Widow symbol. I guess they felt Halloween is for amateurs.
KEEP READING: Ask An Educator: Is My Kid Anti-Social
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