Who Am I This Year

Yesterday was Halloween, and, as usual for the last twenty plus years, I dressed all in black.  Many years I go casual, but this year I wore a dress shirt, no tie (I haven't needed to wear a tie since 1995, make of that what you will).  Some years, I even went as far as having black underwear (clean, of course), but not this year.  I started doing this in high school, as a way of dressing up without having to wear a costume.  I loved trick-or-treating when I was a kid, especially the costumes.  My mother would always hand-make them, but some years were better than others.  My first Halloween was when I was four.  I was a scarecrow.  I don't really remember that much about it.  Things were even better when I started school, because I got to wear my costume all day.  That first year, I was Raggedy Andy.  A girl had dressed up as Raggedy Ann.  We were sitting together for the class party, but my mother moved me to another table because the one we were at was too crowded.  The party wasn't as much fun after that.  The next year, I wanted to be a vampire, but my mother thought my hair wasn't dark enough.  To be fair, I was fairly blond until the second or third grade.  She made me into Little Sprout, the Jolly Green Giant's regular-sized sidekick.  I couldn't wear it to school because it was so fragile and elaborate.  It was also so cold that night that I had to wear a coat, and no one really got to see it anyway. For fourth grade, I got to be a dragon.  It had a huge cardboard mask.  My mother didn't want me to wear it to school because she was afraid someone would try and damage it.  I overruled her.  While waiting for the bus to go home, some kids did try and ripped off one of the Styrofoam eyeballs (that wasn't even the worst thing to happen to me waiting to go home, but for on that some other time).  It was easily glued back on, but she was still somewhat mad at me.  For sixth grade or so, the school was holding a special dance.  I actually went.  My costume that year was a mummy.  It was warm that year, and part of my costume was wearing long, thermal underwear under bloody gauze bandages.  I am not sure if it was the heat or the embarrassment of being in my underwear, but I was so uncomfortable that I had to leave after only a few minutes.  For my final year of costumes, I wanted something great.  However, my mother kept nixing each one of my ideas.  Finally, she decided that I was going as a scarecrow again.  I hated it.  To this day, I don't understand why she couldn't just listen to my and try out one of my ideas.  It looked so bad and uninspiring.  That was to be my last costume.  I did have a costume of sorts for my lead role in my eighth grade class's Christmas pageant, but we never got to perform it.  I would have tried acting in high school or college, but I never got the chance.  The best I get to do is dress in black, one day a year, and pretend it is for greater things.