In the world of Halloween costumes, there can only be two distinctions: Great and everything else. Just as easily as a man at a party can possess the most amazing costume of all time, the man beside him can possess something so boring and unoriginal that not even the drunk girl dressed like a slutty pirate will hook up with him.
Granted, her costume is the most believable of all the other slutty pirates at the party.
There’s a fine line between the most creative costumes and the rest that bring shame to the holiest of days, Halloween.
It’s a lot like the fine line between cool Uncle Mike that has money for you every time you see him and creepy Uncle Ted that showed up to Thanksgiving last year as Aunt Mary.
At least it explained why he always “joked” about playing the part of Mrs. Claus on Christmas Eve, when Grandpa dressed up as Santa.
When I was little, Halloween was so much less complicated than it is in college. All I cared about was finding the houses that gave out the large-sized candy bars. I never worried about what my costume would be. Coming up with a good costume was a pointless obstacle in the way of candy.
The only thing I ever had to worry about was the old lady that lived alone on the darkest part of the street and handed out plastic baggies filled with non-brand name chocolate.
I gave those to the homeless.
I’m kidding. I would have never given potentially dangerous candy to homeless people, mainly because I didn’t live in an area where there were any homeless people.
So I gave it to my little sister.
A lot of people try their hardest every year to come up with the greatest costume ever assembled. Until my freshman year, I was not one of those people. For some reason, now it matters to me how great of a costume I have.
It’s been a change that has come over me since coming to college, a lot like the change that occurred after I walked in on my best friend strutting around in his mother’s high heels when we were 12-years-old.
The influence of cross-dressers in my life is so unbelievable you’d almost think it’s all untrue.
I wanted to come up with a good costume last Halloween, but I had a disappointing showing with yet another lackluster costume. I decided to take a long, hard look in the mirror. What I saw made me feel so ashamed and nearly brought tears to my eyes.
Staring back at me was a two-dimensional porous yellow block with sticks for arms, dressed in a shirt and tie.
It turned out that “mirror” was actually something called a “television.”
It also turns out I mistook SpongeBob for me.
Since last Halloween, I’ve thought about nothing except creating the most amazing costume anyone has ever seen. I may have failed a few (all) of my classes and don’t actually “go to this school anymore,” but I think those things are just minor technicalities in the way of achieving superior creativity.
I was excited about my first idea and couldn’t wait to share it with my close friends.
“I’m going to be a Running Joke.”
They only responded with blank stares.
“I’m going to dress like a runner, with short shorts and tube socks and a headband and a tank top, and my shirt’s going to have jokes written all over it.”
More blank stares. One of my friends threw up in his mouth while the other punched me in the face. Apparently this was worse than the “Jump to Conclusions” mat in Office Space.
It was back to the drawing board. I decided it would be best to steer clear of abstract ideas as costumes. My representation of Innocence as a west-Belgian candlestick maker with nine toes and a lisp would have to wait for next year.
I’ve been able to come up with a few solid costume ideas, and I have the rest of the week to whittle down the list to my final selection.
It’ll be an intense and grueling process that occupies almost all of my time for the next few days. There’s a good chance I won’t be showering for a while.
At least that will help me get out of jury duty.
While you may not take your Halloween costume very seriously, I just ask that you think about all the poor people out there (like Boston College and Northeastern University students) who would love to have our creative capacity to come up with special costumes, but can’t because they’re too lame and unoriginal.
And if you can’t come up with a good Halloween costume this year, you might as well transfer to another school. BU has no place for boring minds that can’t do any better than ordinary, run-of-the-mill costumes for one weekend out of the year.
And a football team — we also have no place for a football team.
Kiel Servideo, a sophomore in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].