Monthly Wrap: Our Most Pathetic Halloweens

I just want want to say how much I loved hearing the stories of your most pathetic Halloweens: the man who answered your request for candy by giving you dead chickens, the yellow body paint that wouldn’t come off, the parents who had you passing out evangelical pamphlets, the small children you terrified in your dead can-can girl outfit, …!

Here’s my story of deciding to go to a Halloween party on my due date. Mr. Henderson wanted me to go as a watermelon farmer. He was going to buy me a pair of biggie-sized overalls, cut out the front, and paint my belly. Nice!

Then we decided painting my stomach might make things difficult for the midwife if I happened to go into labor that night, so we kept thinking.

At the last minute, we thought a better (and warmer) option would be for us to go to the party as Don Juan and some chick he knocked up. The problem with doing things at the last minute is getting the costume right. Mr. H pulled something from the costume shop at CMU, where he was teaching at the time. The kinds of dresses that are stored there are generally designed for beautiful, skinny actresses, and let’s just say the costume he chose didn’t fit. There was the problem about how high the skirt hung in front. There was the problem about where, exactly, to tie the sash.

But the real problem was that this dress was made for some cute little actress to mush her cute little bosom upwards for a sexy barmaid look. And at 9 months pregnant, my bosom wouldn’t fit inside that no-stretch fabric, so I had to kind of stuff everything down, into other, roomier areas of the dress. And maybe your experience is different from mine, but I don’t know a lot of woman who want to angle everything downwards before they step out for the evening. Let’s just say the result was really seriously not barmaid-sexy.

Of course, no one in their right mind would post a photo of that sort on their blog.

The only thing that got me through the embarrassment and the discomfort of being at the party was the idea that I might actually go into labor and be able to take a full breath again. Alas, it would be another week.

But one year later, guess who spent his first Halloween dressed as a tree frog?

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Real quick. Something I’m thinking of attending (Thur, Nov. 20): Transformers: The Story of How A Literary Property Becomes A Film

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Thanks to all of you who played here this week, and to my guest, Dan Conaway, my really and truly amazing agent, who – did I fail to mention? – also plays guitar and has a photo of Keith Richards on his wall.  Thanks, as well, to everyone who linked to LitPark this week: Ellen Meister’s Side Dish, M.J. Rose’s Buzz, Balls & Hype, Red Room, and Backspace. I appreciate those links!

Remember: I’m running Part 2 of my interview with Dan next week, so stop by for a new question of the month and a very revealing talk that you absolutely don’t want to miss!