My son is a cow

My fifteen-year-old went off to school today dressed as a cow. I have never really understood Halloween (I mean, every other day of the year, you tell your children not to take candy from strangers, but this night it's okay). I remember feeling quite self conscious as a kid trick-or-treating, as if I were panhandling for sweets. It's not my favourite holiday, and watching my neighbours really decorating their yards is sort of baffling to me. (Where do they store all of these ghouls and skeletons the rest of the year?)

Having said that, I do have some favourite costumes I've seen and/or made over the years:

• one year I shaved my boys' heads and wrapped them in saffron-coloured fabric and they went out as Buddhist monks (everyone thought they were Hari-Krishnas)
• once my son wore a lawn bag like a dress, with shoulder straps, stuck fake autumn leaves around the top edge of it, and went as yard waste
• once my sister did the same with a large dog food bag, with her face painted brown and a rubber bone in her hair, and went as dog food
• someone I know stuck paint swatches all over herself and went as Fifty Shades of Gray
• I remember sewing a hula-hoop into the hem of a red silk dress and going as a Southern Belle
• once my older sister was supposed to go to a party dressed as her favourite literary character. She was very pregnant at the time, so she put a big scarlet A on her chest and went as Hester Prynne

In the paper yesterday there was an op ed piece from a woman, a stay-at-home mom, who declared she was going to be a "mummy" for Halloween. That's my favourite thing to be too.