Costumes

Last weekend I had the pleasure of riding the Thunder Mountain Railroad train to the pumpkin patch with my mother and my son.  It was great fun and my son got to pick out two pumpkins — both of which have been properly carved and set outside our door.  Then, because we had a bit of time before my mother had to go home, we went costume shopping.

It’s been a while since I’ve done that and I was more than a little startled at some of the costumes they had out there.  In particular, costumes for women that were blatantly meant for sex appeal.  I’m not going to rant and rave about that.  Honestly, if you feel comfortable in something like that, then have fun.

However, there are many of us who would prefer to wear something fun without freezing in the late October weather.  There was only one small section of costumes that fit this bill and one of them included a Gumbi outfit.  (There was also a cute wizard costume but it was over a hundred dollars and I’m afraid I’m too cheap to permit myself such a purchase.)  I ended up purchasing a Star Trek costume even though it was made for a man and twice my size.

Since I am a geek, this made me happy.  Even if I did choose to forego the Spock ears and just get a phaser (which has been commandeered by my son as one of the coolest toys we own).  In retrospect, however, I would have been three times as happy with a female Star Trek costume.  I can’t imagine this costume store had run out of such a thing since its shelves were full to bursting.  Which means they just didn’t think to put it in stock.  As if every woman in the world wants to wear fishnet pantyhose and above-the-thigh skirts.

Like I said before, if you enjoy wearing those things then that’s fine.  I just wish they had a little more variety for those of us who don’t.    And I should probably qualify that statement with the fact that this was a family costume store, not just an odd-ball store.  My son is going to be Bumblebee from Transformers and they had plenty of stuff in there for him as well.

But I’ll have fun on Halloween anyway, dwarfed in my Star Trek outfit and using my phaser every time my son does something silly.  I’m sure I could have found something online that fit me, but half the fun of Halloween is hunting for that costume and rifling through the stuff in the store.  As much as I love doing things online, using my Kindle, and rating books on Goodreads, there are still some things that you have to do physically — if only to get out of the house now and then.