In talking to ChaplainMom tonight I realized I may have given the wrong impression last week. When I said that our costumes growing up were often original and/or homemade, I wasn't implying that they were all particularly good.

Exhibit A:
In third grade I went as a Rubik's Cube. (Why yes, I was a nerd, why do you ask?) Unfortunately, the only box we had on hand was not a perfect cube--the sides were smaller and rectangular. Only the front and back were square. Also, my cube was a solved cube--I mounted colored posterboard and drew a grid on each side. Another person went as a cube, but hers was perfectly square and unsolved. She won the costume contest that year, so I had all these people coming up to me saying, "Oh you won," and I had to say, "No, it was the *other* Rubik's Cube."

Exhibit B:
When I was a little older, I had possession of this styrofoam mannequin head--I cannot imagine why. But I decided to dress up as a decapitated person. So I wore a huge shirt that I buttoned up over my head, and carried around this mannequin head. Two problems:
1. The tuft of brown hair that poked up the top, ruining the effect
2. I couldn't frickin SEE!

Exhibit C:
In either 1978 or 1979, I went as Princess Leia. Mamala sewed me a white gown with hood, and I had long enough hair to do the buns. That was an awesome costume, despite the fact that my version of Leia had coke-bottle glasses. Anyway.

Some years later, we were casting about for a costume for my little brother to wear and we came across the robe. So we cut eye holes in the hood and had him wear it backwards as a ghost.

Yes, my baby brother wore a white gown.
With a hood.
With eye holes cut out of it.

Geez Louise.


I rest my case!

Perhaps my siblings will stop by and add their own evidence.