I wore one of my favorite Halloween costumes ever when I was five years old. As soon as I saw it in the store I knew I had to have it and that nothing else would do. Not Cinderella, not Rainbow Bright, and certainly not Strawberry Shortcake. I begged my mom to buy it until she relented. We brought it home and she hung it on a hook in the bathroom.
As soon as mom left me alone in the bathroom it morphed into something horrific. The costume that had been so great in the store, so foreboding-yet-fun, so very-not-girly, had somehow turned into a huge, scary, child-eating monstrosity that would gobble me up and spit me out without so much as a second thought. As day turned to night and the bathroom got dark, it got even worse. The white fabric glowed on the black background as it seemingly hung from mid-air.
I played it cool at first. I just didn't use the bathroom. My dad came home from work. I had to pee but I held it until I couldn't anymore. It wasn't until I was standing at the bathroom door, bawling, that dad figured out why I refused to go in. He took down the costume and threw it in a cabinet in the peeved-and-exasperated way that parents of young children have perfected.
You'd think I'd be too scared to wear the costume, but nope. When Halloween came around we dug it out of the cabinet and I put it one without any problem. It wasn't scary when I didn't have to look at it. Which still holds true, if you think about it.
