Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.

I have been dressing up for Halloween for yeeeeaaars! Even now, a good dressing up is a great way to let your alter egos out. (hence my stint as a drag king for a while)

As a youth the local parks and recs would put on a very lovely Halloween festival. While it was a kick to go and see the festivities, it was my competitive self that longed for the main event!

The Costume Contest

We would take a gander at the booths with tests of skills like fishing for a ghoul goodies bag, tossing the skull bean bags through a monsters mouth, and prizes of plastic spiders and wax vampire teeth. All the while, trying to size up the competition that could be in our age group.

This is where we three sisters, with a creative mom, would excel!

Like the year we were the scarecrow family; mother, father and kid 'crows. I was, of course, the dad. My mother painted these burlap type sacks she made with cute lil scarecrow faces. Stitched on to the top of each went straw hair, braided at the sides for the kid 'crow. On top of my head, a cowboy hat that was my dad's. It had seen better days; sweat ringed on the brow, holes in the straw brim, and a shiteous, '70 styled, woven headband holding it together.

We took first place, of course.

Side Note: I was actually offered an entire bowl of mini candy bars in exchange for the hat at one house during our trick or treating. One look back at my dad lead me to believe that he wasn't open to negotiations. It's the deal that "could have been" that still hunts me to this day.

Then there was the Halloween Coloring Book year. My sister and I were a coloring book and crayon. Of course...big girl was the book. It was an enormous box, covered in contact paper and decorated with images of Halloween. My face peeked out of a hole in the front, my arms out the sides...unable to span the distance to scratch my nose.

My sister, rolled up in poster board, wore a purple dunce cap to resemble a sharpened crayon tip. Not only did she have a hard time walking, but she tripped at the top of a hill and rolled to the bottom, and couldn't get up. There she was, arms and feet flailing, unable to bend in the middle to get herself up. Her bag of candy, littered the front yard.

I peed my coloring book pages laughing so hard.

Side Note: At one house I couldn't fit down their walkway, so my sister took my candy bag and said it was for her sister. The home owner, of course, doubted her. Till they looked down the path and saw a huge green coloring book in the yard. This feeling still haunts me.

We enlisted our friend next door to round out the Marx Brothers one year. Since I already sport Groucho eyebrows, I had a lock on that character. To make my costume authentic, my dad handed me a cigar he had bought, still wrapped in it's protective cellophane.

"Do NOT take the cellophane off!", was his stern warning. Partly guilty he was handing me a real cigar, I'm sure.

We took first that year as well.

Side Note: By the time we were half way done, trick or treating I had chewed through the cellophane and was turning green. It was the first and only time I didn't eat candy on the route...cuz I thought I was going to hurl.

Fruit of the Loom got us first place again, two bunches of grapes and that sassy apple. My mother, who really should have worked in Hollywood, came up with the idea to paper mache balloons, spray painted green and purple and attached to black garbage bags. By the end of the night, I had left purple grapes all over the neighborhood.

Every year we racked up yet another win for the Gilbert Girls. With every win came a picture in the town paper. It was like we were Halloween Rock Stars! Other kids could try, but we crushed them under our boots year after year.

No store bought goods here! No sir. Take your boxed Scooby Doo and go home. Don't even try with that Strawberry Shortcake you got at Sears. Why don't you armatures come back when you can take a bedspread and make a senorita costume one year, then a pirate costume the next.

Halloween ain't for kids....it's for masters of illusion!