Trick or Treating with Bigfoot

We are just creeping past the recovery period of Halloween, and with the haze of the past weekend fading and the brightness of a new weekend approaching, this is as good a time as any to reflect on the recent holiday. I’m sure this will come as a relief to my parents that the only thing I dislike about Halloween is the unwritten acceptability of dressing like a, for lack of a better word, prostitute.

My friend recently let out a sigh of relief when she said that now that we were no longer in college we didn’t have to alter (usually already slutty) costumes to be slutty(ier). This is true, with that diploma came the strength to wear full pants. To be honest, my inability to dress like my peers is not completely by choice. I have very large feet, feet that have trouble finding heels. It’s really hard to dress slutty when you are trying to find men’s shoes that can pass as unisex. If you think you have a problem finding white knee high boots for your go-go dancer costume, try finding them in “huge ass”, as that is my shoe size.

One of the trickiest parts of Halloween is the inevitable misplacement of parts of your costume throughout the night. One minute you’re dressed as a Lumber Jill then, after losing your hunting hat and fake ax, all of a sudden you’re Melissa Etheridge. You have to have a backup costume idea that is closely tied to what you are wearing in case the above scenario happens to you. I always have a backup explanation in my head, and this year was no different. I went as Emma Stone from Easy A, I wore a black top, black leggings, black sunglasses and a red sticky-backed A on my chest. I knew that should I lose my red sticky-backed A, (which I did, only to later find it stuck to my friend's purse) I could easily tell people I was dressed as nighttime. Or stage help.

While I thought losing my red A (the only real hint to my costume) would be the biggest challenge of the night, I was wrong. Both explaining that my costume was Easy A and not ETA, (how does one even dress as Estimated Time of Arrival?) and telling people that my name is not Hanna, Manna or Monica were both equally harder than keeping track of my red A. It is SO hard to correct people in a loud club. And wracking my brain for hand gestures to explain the correct pronunciation of my name, which usually becomes me making circles in the air like a wind turbine to suggest that one more turn of the mental mouse wheel in their brain and they've got it, is exhausting. Then having to come up with hand gestures for Easy A, not ETA, is down right impossible. It did not take long before I gave up and accepted whatever muffled name anyone heard during our introduction. Yes, yes my name is Paula. And I'm dressed as a measurement of time.

While I am a strong believer in Halloween being the perfect opportunity for psychopaths to hit the town, innocently dressed as Billy Mays, I do love this holiday. And despite my feet’s efforts to change my mind, I will not yield! Happy Halloween (four days late…)