I love Halloween. I always have. Candy, costumes, celebrating for no clear reason — these are, without debate, the best things ever. I tend to take costumes pretty seriously. If I get an idea in my head, you will need to sedate me and surgically remove the idea from my brain in order to get me to change course. My personality is a little off-kilter like this: I spend a good deal of time yielding to other’s opinions, very go-with-the-flow and “whatever you think!”, and then, out of nowhere, I’ll dig in my heels on something inconsequential, and you’ll never change my mind, not in a million years or for a million dollars. Ask my husband how he feels about this. (SPOILER: HE LOVES IT.) (Editor’s note: No, he doesn’t.)

I remember having a crystal clear vision for my Halloween costume in fourth grade. I wanted to be an artist: have a tiny mustache, a painter’s palette, a beret. Oh, it would be very inspired! Very meaningful! Very French! Here’s how it turned out:

OH BLESS. Carol, what are you doing? Why is your sister something normal like CINDERELLA and your brother a karate guy, and you are wearing the strangest outfit in the world, holding a palette haphazardly made out of poster board and somehow having the nerve to stand so jauntily?!

This girl stirs up in me both a deep affection and a desperate need to smack my own forehead. The truth is that if you were to take a picture of my SOUL, it would look just like this, a weird little girl with a kicky beret and soul patch/mustache combo she drew on herself with cheap eyeliner, loving life and wanting to paint the world a better place, but also kind of embarrassed that she couldn’t bring herself to be a witch like everyone else her age. I also have never been able to bring myself to put TOO much energy on any given costume, hence the last-minute poster board palette, so they all end up in the strange, sad realm called “Original Thought in the Hands of a Generally Type B Personality.” Further proof is this terrible picture of me dressed as Mary Katherine Gallagher from SNL. 

Could I not straighten my hair? Find a better fitting vest? WHY AM I SO TALL AND OLD? HALLOWEEN IS NOT FOR YOU, TALL AND OLD CAROLINE! Did it not bother me that my seven-year-old sister was cool enough to choose to be Britney Spears? JUST BE NORMAL AND DRESS UP LIKE A GHOST! Everything about his picture is a travesty. Honestly, I can’t even bring myself to show you a picture of my middle school Jan Brady costume.

Just about the only benefit to strong vision combined with half-hearted execution is that as a mother, I have been able to find my Halloween sweet spot: speed-creating costumes for my kids. It satisfies my need to create without giving me lots of work, and if it looks bad, I can say, “Meh, I made it in an hour.”

So, as proof that even our embarrassing childhood tendencies can sometimes turn out okay, please enjoy these pictures of costumes I’ve speed-created and forced upon my children. They look pretty darn good from far away, but up close, whew. Not pretty. They’re Monets, you know, the French painter. Things are truly coming full circle.

Happy Halloween from your favorite former French painter and type B costume creator. Glad we can hang out on the internet.