“Have you thought about your Halloween costume?” I ask Sol.
He shrugs. “Not really.”
“You should decide. Halloween’s soon,” Luna echoes my thoughts. She sits on the floor cutting triangles—destined to be Siberian Husky ears—out of black felt. “Maybe you could be what you were last year,” she says.
“No,” Sol says. “That would be boring.”
Last year he was an unnamed hero in a chainmail shirt and green tunic, with a sword strapped to his back. He claimed he was not Link from
The Legend of Zelda and not Aragorn from the
The Lord of the Rings, though he regularly pretended to be both of these characters.
~~~~~~~~~~
The requisite trick-or-treat banter was a bit tedious for the first few houses. The candy-givers did their best to puzzle out his costume. “Robin Hood? No. A knight? No. A Prince? No....”
The candy-taker stood there staring, letting them go on guessing with no apparent intention to clarify the issue. It wasn’t done in a “You’re an idiot, and I won’t dignify your stupidity with a response” kind of way. It was more like “I’m not exactly sure how to answer that question, so I just won’t say anything.”
At one point we took him aside and suggested he consider a backstory for his character, or even a name, just so he could politely put an end to people’s guessing. He considered this a moment, then shrugged and continued on, his younger sister, an adorable, blatantly obvious pink pig, beside him.
A few houses later we were met by an elderly couple beaming with the glow of vicarious Halloween fun. Or maybe it was the glow of one too many snack-size chocolate bars.
“And what is this? I see a cute little pig, and...let’s see...Robin Hood?”
Sol held his bag out in front of him. “I’m a soldier who’s left the Queen’s army and gone off on his own to be a ranger.”
Stunned silence all around. Confused looks exchanged.
“Well, how about that?” the man finally said. “A soldier. Here’s some candy for you.”
Sol started to correct the man but was pushed aside by a ninja, a princess, and a firefighter. “Thanks,” he said, and moved on to the next house.
~~~~~~~
Luna hands me the black triangles. “Maybe you could be a Bionicle,” she says.
“How could I?” Sol asks. “I’d have to drill holes all over my body.”
“Yeah,” she concurrs.
“Do I have to dress up?” Sol asks.
“If you want to go trick-or-treating you do.” I say. I survey an old gray t-shirt.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because it’s a give and take—an exchange,” I say, cutting away the extra fabric. “You dress-up; strangers give you candy.”
“Then I’ll go like this,” he says, smiling. “I’ll say, I’m just another kid, consuming resources and using technology, who will eventually destroy the planet for all future generations.”
I look at him, and oddly enough, in jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, holding a plastic bio-mechanical figure newly won on e-bay, he looks as much in costume as he ever has.
