When I was a child, I used to dress up as a ninja every year for Halloween. We didn't have enough money for an actual costume, so I just put a blanket over my face. I wanted to be like Snake Eyes, the silent ninja from G.I. Joe. I wanted to throw ninja stars around the corner of our hallway. All day I'd practice with small paper stars, taped heavily that never found their way around the corner like I wanted. Life is full of little disappointments.
One year, in fourth grade, I went with my best friend's mom to pick out a real costume. Somehow, we settled on a raccoon. I was, by fourth grade, aware that I was too old to be wearing a raccoon costume without looking like a fool. This identity, knowledge of self in relation to other selves, wasn't with me much until that year. Suddenly, I knew, acutely, that I looked foolish wearing a costume and holding out my bag and saying trick or treat to adults, who knew that I was too old to be dressed up in a hot costume.
I cut trick or treating short that night and went home with a pillow case only half full of candy, not accounting for all the crummy hard candy that some people gave out at Halloween, Jolly Ranchers and thick bazooka Joe gumballs, little plastic wrappers of disappointment. You wish, some years, maybe not often, but when you write, or in reverie that you could go back in time. and I don't mean to physically shrink myself, But rather, you wish that you could go back to a little boy standing at the edge of a hallways with a piece of folded paper in his hands, desperately, but hopefully, waiting for it to turn round the corner and make a beeline for the back door. And then you'd know, at least for that day, that you'd done something new.
One year, in fourth grade, I went with my best friend's mom to pick out a real costume. Somehow, we settled on a raccoon. I was, by fourth grade, aware that I was too old to be wearing a raccoon costume without looking like a fool. This identity, knowledge of self in relation to other selves, wasn't with me much until that year. Suddenly, I knew, acutely, that I looked foolish wearing a costume and holding out my bag and saying trick or treat to adults, who knew that I was too old to be dressed up in a hot costume.
I cut trick or treating short that night and went home with a pillow case only half full of candy, not accounting for all the crummy hard candy that some people gave out at Halloween, Jolly Ranchers and thick bazooka Joe gumballs, little plastic wrappers of disappointment. You wish, some years, maybe not often, but when you write, or in reverie that you could go back in time. and I don't mean to physically shrink myself, But rather, you wish that you could go back to a little boy standing at the edge of a hallways with a piece of folded paper in his hands, desperately, but hopefully, waiting for it to turn round the corner and make a beeline for the back door. And then you'd know, at least for that day, that you'd done something new.
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