Max and I went Halloween shopping today. To be accurate, this is the 3rd or 4th Halloween shopping event that either involves or focuses on him so far. This is his fault because he looks so adorable in every costume he puts on. Ape? Cute. Dog? Cute. Pooh Bear? Don’t even get me started.
This time I planned to get something, anything, for myself. As usual, I started to seize up with the paralysis of choice. If you ask me ‘what do I want to be?’ I look at you with a fearful and confused look in my eye. What do I want to be? What truly represents me? Why do I over think every decision in my life? Can’t I just pick something and relax?
Well, I found the catalyst that pushed me past the critical decision-making threshold-cheapness! Specifically, a 50% off all Halloween items at Zellers. I won’t pay 15 bucks for a cheap vampire cape, but evidently 7.50 is a perfectly reasonable sum.
A big part of the appeal is the large variety of nonsense I could buy for very little money. Instead of having to carefully pick one costume idea and spend my meager funds on that, I could pick shoddy accoutrements from a bunch of disguise ideas. I bought the cape, a pair of glow in the dark handcuffs, deluxe makeup kit with vampire fangs and glow in the dark fake nails, a wig and gloves and hat for the wife, a devil mask, and another set of kid-friendly makeup, all for 35 bucks. I hope no one at the store thought I was implying anything about my dear wife when I was asking Max “should we get a broom and witch’s hat for mommy?”.
Now I can finally realize my secret dream of being a vampire millionaire detective (wasn’t that a show on Fox?). There’s probably a moral to this story, but heck if I know what it is right now. But I do know that relaxing and going with the holiday spirit made the whole thing a lot more fun. I may have reclaimed yet another holiday/special event from my anxious childhood. Score!
Chris Loblaw, Author 