Chop Me Up, Chop Me Down
I think I hate my kid's Halloween costume.
Vivian Manning-Schaffel: My first grader and I set out for what I thought would be a cool adventure -- a visit to one of those intense Halloween shops chock-full of rubber dismembered hands, lab coats with tags that read "Proctologist," plastic skeletons with eyeballs hanging off of them, and every kind of getup you could imagine.
He'd settled on being a ninja for weeks. He first spotted the costume among a bundle of Halloween catalogs cramping our mailbox in September. I kept clocking him to see if he'd change his mind like he did, $30 later, last year. Much to my chagrin, he didn't. So this shop visit reckoned it time for both of us to commit or get off the pot.
We hit the kid section, stumbled upon the ninja costume, and that was the end of it. I asked if he wouldn't rather be Luke Skywalker again, or maybe something devoid of a mock weapon, but it was no use. I gave in. And every mom knows that no good deed goes unpunished. If getting gouged for 40-something bucks wasn't enough (now that we're home), I think I really hate the goddamn thing.
Why? This glorified '70s zoot suit with pleather vest and requisite plastic ninja blades not only looks like something David Carradine wore to Studio 54, it rendered the kid a true method actor. After a brief, highly choreographed spell during which he assaulted the air in his room, he found great joy in practicing his new ninja moves on me and his dad. And in witnessing this rambunctious display, he succeeded in scaring the daylights out of his 2-year-old sister, and I got to clean up after that.
I have only myself to blame. I'm a colossal jackass for giving in to the lure of this semi-violent costume. But what does this say about me as a mother? Am I inadvertently advocating this brand of aggressive behavior by virtue of emptying my pockets for this outfit?
I'd tell anyone in my shoes to lighten the hell up. He's hardly the only boy in his class who's planning on being something of this ilk for Halloween -- not by a long shot. And isn't this a natural extension of the superhero phase?
What do you all think?