I was asked twice over lunch last week what I was going to be for Halloween. Both times my response was Diego, Dora the Explorer's cousin. You see, the plan was for the whole family to be characters from the Nickelodeon cartoon. Our oldest would be Dora, our youngest would be Boots the Monkey, Zee would be Alicia and I would be Diego.

It seemed easy enough. Diego has brown hair, like me, so all I needed was shorts, a T-shirt and an orange backpack.

The plan fell apart, though, because our oldest decided she didn't want to be Dora. She wanted to be a cat.

That's when I seriously considered Balloon Boy as a costume. We happened to already have a helium balloon at home, so I was set.

Yesterday afternoon, I came home from work to a house that was decorated and ready for the Halloween party we were throwing for a bunch of aunties, uncles, grandparents and cousins. I also came home to a 2½-year-old daughter who couldn't stop talking about how much she was looking forward to Halloween.

"I'm gonna be a cat! Mommy paint my nose black! And whiskers too! We're gonna go trick-or-treat! Because it's Halloween! Mommy's gonna be a witch. And I'm gonna be a cat! Because it's Halloweeeeeeen!"

I found it hard to drum up the same kind of excitement for my Balloon Boy costume. "Yes, honey, and Pappa's gonna be holding a balloon!" Thrilling.

That's how I found myself looking through the house this morning for stuff lying around that could be thrown together and somehow pass for a costume. I didn't have much luck, and that's how I found myself at Kmart at noon today looking through the aisles for stuff that could be thrown together and somehow pass for a costume.

The reason I went to Kmart was an ad I saw yesterday that promised 50 percent off on all Halloween costumes. I brought both our girls with me while Zee stayed home and prepared for the party that was five hours away. By the candy next to the cash registers, I saw two shopping carts half-full of odd costume pieces and I saw some potholders and aprons with pumpkin prints hanging next to the carts.

I couldn't find the Halloween department, though, so I wandered over to the toy section and looked there. There was nothing there either, so I asked a clerk. "Oh, the Halloween costumes are over by the candy next to the cash registers."

Oh. I see. That was the Halloween department. Well, maybe that balloon isn't such a bad idea after all.

Our oldest daughter noticed my deflated demeanor and I think she somehow sensed the source of it and felt compelled to help, because she gave me a suggestion for a costume. She said, out of the blue, "Are you gonna be a spider web, Pappa?"

A spider web? Now, there's an idea. I looked around and saw nothing that reminded me of a web, so I have no clue how she thought of that costume. But I was filled with a resolve to make it happen.

I wandered the aisles looking for some kind of white material that was stringy or meshy. "Are you looking for spiders, Pappa?" Oh yes, we've got to find something for that too.

I came home with a white mesh laundry bag for $7.19, a cotton rope for $3.59 and five decorative spiders on sale for a buck each. As our kids settled in for their afternoon naps, I went to work on the spider web with the words of our daughter echoing in my head. "Are you gonna be a spider web, Pappa?" Yes, I am.

Threading a cotton laundry rope through the mesh of a laundry bag with holes cut out for my head and arms resulted in something that looked like a wearable spider web.

When our oldest girl woke up from her nap, she was even more excited by the pending Halloween party and the idea of getting into her cat costume than she had been the day before.

As I got into my spider web costume, I was excited too. And when my daughter saw me in it, I can't tell you how happy I was that I wasn't just holding a balloon.

Tags: Balloon Boy, costumes, Diego, Dora the Explorer, Halloween, Kmart, Nickelodeon, spider web

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Halloween. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.