My Outdated Halloween Post

This is outdated but hey, I didn't have a blog on Halloweeen. It must still enter the record. So here it goes.

Being Not Even American, I decided to sacrificially humor my five-year old child and get a Halloween costume this year. If you are from a country that celebrates Carnaval spelled with THREE A's in February like me, then you really understand how much I "don't get" Halloween: it's in the wrong month, it's not full of bright colors and sequins and debauched happiness and there's no sexual tension in the streets. But whatever, my son is Americano and he loves it and my job in life is to make him happy. So I went online to find a costume.

Everything I was finding had the following size options:

"Small",
"Extra Small",
"Itty Bitty",
"Skinny Bitches Only",
"Super Skinny Midget Bitches Only" and
"I know your fat ass didn't just try to wear a Wonder Woman Costume!".

I mean, I do not want necessarily to take you into the dark recesses of my inner, Oprah-tinged inadequacies but let's call a spade a spade: there is a bit of the "will this make me look fat?" paranoia that consumes most of my existence. I am not proud of it and yes, I plan to have eradicated it by my 30th birthday*, but right now it's there. We all have our struggles.

(*when I say “it” do I mean the fat or the paranoia?)

Anyway, so when I finally came upon the Halle Berry Movie inspired Catwoman suit and found it had real life size options, I attributed that happy occasion to Halle's being black. I ordered a “large”, hoping that by large they really meant large, and that they were not like every sales associate in my Alto Manhattan neighborhood where large really means mediano, and a seven is considered a big shoe size.

Cut to me opening the package when it finally arrived. I was very anxious because I just knew that this suit was, of course, not going to fit me and was, of course, going to make me feel like shit. Prepared for the worse, I opened my package... only to find that it contained the biggest Catwoman suit I had ever seen!!! I put it on and it did not fit except for the mask and claws. The look I was going for had been a kind of tongue-in-cheek-sexy-mom thing, and what I got instead was more like

Tony the Tiger. "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat, fuck me," I thought.

To add insult to injury, I was most depressed on Halloween day (it was a Monday and I am always, always very depressed on Mondays) and left with the use of just the mask and the claws, my whole vibe was less "Feline Thunder" and more, I don't know, "Defeat, wearing fake leather head piece.” My son was disappointed at first that I did not have full regalia, but then, at some point during our trick-or-treating adventure, he said to me, "Catwoman: you're a star!".

I learned three important things:

1. When depressed, it is really helpful to walk around with half your face covered by a mask, and never take it off, even when you are washing down onion rings with Coronas in a diner, to the dismay of Upper West Side Ladies who look upon your child--who is not even drinking Coronas!--with a most preoccupied look...

2. Halloween is just not my thing

3. When depressed, the company of your child makes you no longer depressed.