I took my six year old to a birthday party on the weekend and planned a nice afternoon with my nine year old who was tasked with planning our outing with a few restrictions; no Fast Food, no spitting chewed up paper through straws at each other or strangers, no zip-lining but otherwise, I was open to her suggestions.
She really wanted to go shopping for a Halloween costume and had decided on being a Cow Girl. I’m not sure where the inspiration came from but who am I to question inspiration? Though, I did wonder if we couldn’t just throw on a plaid shirt, some pig-tails and I could dress up like a goat or a pony and spare us the trip to the store.
We walked in the front door of Hallowe’en City and I wondered what kind of city I had just stumbled upon and how I had been catapulted into a completely different world, so outside of my comfort level, sitting so unassumingly next to Nails Nails Nails! Did the Nails triplets even know this place was here?
I was never that into Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, you would be hard pressed to find a kid who liked candy as much as I did and knew how to hide it from her brothers in, wait, I almost gave up the Caramilk secret.
It was the costumes I didn’t really care about. One year, I went out as a newspaper carrier (because I was one) and simply slung my bag over my shoulder and headed out the door. The bag was genius because it could hold a ton of candy and I had built up my shoulder muscles from the papers so I could have walked for miles gathering enough treats for the entire year. (For a normal kid, two weeks max for me)
I promised myself I would keep an open mind and focus on Hanna’s needs; Cow Girl costume. I looked up and down a couple of aisles and perhaps closed mindedly hated everything I saw.
The store offered a wonderful and diverse selection of costumes if you were hoping to be a Sexy Nurse or prostitute or anything involving human restraints. There were very few Cow Girl costumes, though, no shortage of guns in holsters, some with sparkly pink tassels with matching nipple covers.
Hanna of course said, “I LOVE IT ALL!” so I quickly swept her out of the store and whisked her into Booster Juice so we could cleanse our palates with anything with the word detox and nothing to do with tight, black, leather pants and spiked heels or that she might later refer to as “epic”.
It wasn’t until that evening when we ran into some neighbours while out for a bike ride that I mentioned our shopping dilemma. One of the kids said, “That store is for ages sixteen and up, it says so right on the sign.”
Oh.
But that does beg the question, can you now fast-track through Sexy Nurse College because that wasn’t an option when I was a student?
