Sunday Newscape Magazine

One of the good things about watching your children grow into teenagers who are too old to trick or treat is that you no longer have a panic attack when you hear someone on one of those morning television shows say something like this:

"Halloween is coming! It’s time for all you good parents to make fun and creative costumes for your kids. Otherwise, your children will spend years in expensive therapy that you’ll have to pay for!”

Maybe the announcer doesn’t say exactly those words, but that’s what you hear because you are like me, a craft-impaired individual who was not told before becoming a parent that part of the job entailed coming up with homemade Halloween costumes. And like me, you have a deep, festering resentment of those Martha Stewart clones who’ve had the gall to get fruitful and multiply and are even now hunched over their dining room tables creating costumes for their children that require more time and effort than you spent planning your wedding.

This resentment is so deep that it’s in one of those places that people don’t talk about at parties, but it’s definitely there, and when you hear those words on television, streamers of this resentment shoot up and cause considerable heartburn.

But no one will feel sorry for you, so stop whining about your heartburn and focus on the task at hand. And don’t think you can just throw together some half-baked costume – like a bedsheet with a couple of poorly aligned eye holes – the way your parents did. No, my friend. Parenting has become a competitive sport (soon to be an event in the Olympics), and you’re going to have to do better than that.

So get yourself down to the mall and buy your child a fun and creative costume made in a factory in China. You’ll have lots of choices. For little boys, you may choose some version of a licensed character that will not only delight your son but further enrich whatever multinational corporation owns the rights to that character. (Of course, if you really wanted to create a homemade costume for your son, you could attach a gigantic piece of foil shaped like a package of Jiffy Pop popcorn to your boy, and he could go trick or treating as the recently infamous balloon boy. Then again, maybe not such a good idea.)

For little girls you'll have a selection of highly realistic occupational costumes (my personal favorite: the ‘Major Trouble’ military outfit complete with camouflage short skirt and heels) or some version of Barbie or the perennial favorite princess.

Buy the costume and hustle on out of the mall, you costume-defective parent. But do not think that you’re done. You’ve got to take your store-bought outfit to a seamstress who can personalize it so much that everyone will think that you actually made it yourself. Then you’ll be a hero to your child, and all the Martha clones will want to be your friend. Then you'll be invited to those parties where people don't talk about your festering resentments, which will no longer cause you heartburn because everyone will consider you to be cool and crafty.

There's no need to thank me for this valuable advice. As a parent who now has to worry about what my teens wear every day, instead of just at Halloween, I’m glad I could help.

© Jackie Papandrew, All Rights Reserved