2025, Fantasy, holidays, home, Mysteries

Prince Who?

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On Tuesday we talked about trick-or-treaters and Bill mentioned that he and Robin also ask kids about their costumes.  I assume that most all adults do this.  It’s a low-level way to make a short connection.

One of my last little groups consisted of a girl in a pink princess dress and a boy in some kind of princely attire.  Knowing that I would never see these kids again and knowing that they won’t care a whit about whether I’m crazy or not, I started a conversation:

Me:  What a great costume.  Are you the Count of Monte Cristo? (knowing full well this kids wouldn’t know what I was talking about.)
Count:  No, I’m Prince Philip
Me:  Oh, from Sleeping Beauty.
Count:  No from Maleficent.
Me:  Silence for a bit.
Me:  (turning to the girl)  Are you a princess?
Count:  She’s Sleeping Beauty
Me:  more silence
Me:  Here we go (handing out the candy)

While I was perfectly willing to be silly about the Count of Monte Cristo, I didn’t think I needed to get into an argument on my front steps with kids about Prince Philip trick-or-treating with Sleeping Beauty but not knowing they were in the same story.

Tell me about a costume you wore as a child (Halloween, school play, whatever…)

 

31 thoughts on “Prince Who?”

  1. I remember a store-bought Bugs Bunny costume when I was about 8 yrs. – it was blue, had a sort of hood with the long ears, and a mask. We have a home movie with me and my sister dancing around, being very silly. I turn around and wiggle my cotton tail for the camera, then straighten up, looking rather serious. Of course there is no sound, but we have just been told something like “stop being so silly and act more appropriately.” We then mince around a bit longer…

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    2. My mother also did not experience much Halloween, having lived out on a farm. However, in High School she and a friend broke loose and decided to participate in the event. So they planned to tip over a neighbor’s outhouse. They did that, only to discover the neighbor was in there using it at the time. They ran away, leaving him to escape on his own.

      When she told that story I could scarcely believe it. She was such a rigid and judgement person that it was entirely out of character.

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  5. One of my coworkers dressed up as a very convincing nun one year. She always drove really fast in town and smoked. She rather shocked folks in Dickinson while driving fast down the main drag in town, smoking a cigarette, and flipping off a guy who almost ran into her.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I was almost always a bum. Halloween costumes were always a subject of contention in my childhood. I wanted to dress up in elaborate costumes and my mother had no energy for it. She would say “just be a bum.” So every year I would put together a bum costume–baggy clothes, old hat, worn out shoes. But I still got lots of candy. That was it.

    To compensate, my son had fabulous and imaginative costumes: a monarch butterfly, a clown (I made the costume which outfitted many children to come) a robot, a monster the year of the Halloween blizzard. It was so much fun. I also made myself a terrific witch costume that met my needs for costuming.

    Regarding the Prince–I thought that was going to be Prince Rogers Nelson. That could be fun. Also, on Halloween a woman I know here in EP died at age 91. Her obituary says that her given first name was Princess. I never knew.

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  7. There is a picture of me in a long overcoat, and plastic cheap store mask of, maybe a bank robber? It was never much. Like Cylde, out in the country maybe we’d go into Grandma’s or Grandpa’s but that was about it.

    I remember telling dad one night, while in the barn milking (we’d talk a lot doing that) that I wished we lived in town so I could go smash pumpkins and such. Oops. Wrong thing to tell Dad. I learned something that night. I was probably 13 or 14 I’m guessing.

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  8. I, too, used to make small talk about the costumes of the various trick-or-treaters that would come to our house. Some years ago, before Covid I think, a late trick-or-treater that came to our house was a black teenager in regular street clothes but carrying a pillowcase. I smiled at him and asked “what are you dressed up as?” He hesitated for a few seconds before responding with a sly grin: “a free man.” I thought that was a pretty clever answer and rewarded him with a few extra candy bars.

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  9. When I was about 6 I got a skeleton costume, just thin plastic that you put on like a union suit, that came with a mask and a lighted skull lantern on a stick. I remember being so excited that I walked around the neighborhood in mid afternoon wearing it.

    When my children were small ai sewed very elaborate Hloween costumes for them. One year I made son, about 9, a Penguin costume -The Penguin from Batman. It had an elaborate waiscoat and jacket and pants that we stuffed with pillows.

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  10. One year for Halloween my granddaughter decided she wanted to be a sea slug. Her mother made her costume since, unaccountably, no commercial sea slug costumes were available. The costume was basically cylindrical—a long brown tube. I imagine people were happy to be disabused of their first impression and to learn that it was a sea slug she sought to represent.

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  11. YA had a diverse bunch of costumes over the years. Her earliest costumes were her recycled dance dresses so she went to a princess and Tinker Bell. One year she wanted to be a strawberry (that was an entirely homemade costume) and another year she wanted to be a cowboy. And then there was the obligatory witch one year with a huge black hat. With the exception of those dance dresses when she was three and four, all of her costumes were, if not all handmade by me, partially handmade by me. She gave up trick-or-treating fairly early, probably about 10.

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  12. I don’t remember very much about my early Halloweens. The one memory that has stayed with me was one year when I was about five or six. We were stopping at the farmhouse of some neighbors. I was part of a group of kids that trick or treated together. We were invited to come into their kitchen, where the adults were handing out candy and carefully evaluating the costumes. I became rather smitten with their dog, who was friendly and loved attention. When I looked up, I realized that all the other kids had left. I hastily grabbed my candy basket and ran out the door, afraid of being left behind.

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    1. One of the daughters of that farmhouse family was a year ahead of me in school and was in our group that Halloween. But I can’t ever remember her family without thinking of her older sister. If you Google “who was the first female FBI agent ever killed in the line of duty”, her bio comes up.

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  13. My costumes would be considered offensive, or at least questionable. For several years I was a “gypsy” dressed in various pieces of clothing, scarves and costume jewelry from my mom. When I was old enough to sew at about 11 years old, I dressed as a Native American in a buckskin-colored dress, beaded headband and necklace, braids, and a baby doll swaddled up on my back.

    I loved making costumes for my son and daughter. They were at various times a knight, clown, Captain Hook, jungle explorer (with giant felt snake), dinosaur, Dalmatian puppy, Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Dorothy (Wizard of Oz), Renaissance wench, and a flapper.

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    2. I was a gypsy many times. To dress up with a long flowing skirt and scarves and earrings and makeup was fabulous for me. I had never even heard of the Romany people at that point in my life.

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  15. as a 4th grader my mom made giant blousey sleves for a pirate shirt. i thought i was so cool. in the 70’s i went as wolfman with barbershop sweepings glued on and a putty wolf nose

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