Selling Out

Another Halloween has come and gone. Despite my ambivalent feelings about the holiday, I did engage in many appropriate Halloween activities like eating candy corn, watching vaguely Halloween-themed movies like Ghostbusters and Poltergeist and The Nightmare Before Christmas, celebrating Brady and Seth's birthdays, and carving pumpkins (twice!). I did not hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, eat caramel apples, or dress up my dog, but I nevertheless feel satisfied with my level of holiday spirit.

Surprisingly, my favorite part of Halloween this year was my costume. Last year I went to great pains to explain why I don't like dressing up, but this year my anti-costume support group was living in Texas and I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to come up with something. I started thinking about costumes over two weeks ago, not because I was particularly enthusiastic about the idea, but because if I'm going to have to dress up, I feel like it's got to be good. And in a moment of brilliance, I came up with the perfect idea.

One plain white t-shirt, one pair of jeans that would otherwise have gone to Salvation Army, two fabric pens, a couple #2 pencils, and two weeks of study breaks later, I was ready to go:


Wait, there's more!


You may not be catching the vision, but that's okay. I kind of knew when I made the costume that it would be a hard one to guess. I got, "Are you school?" "Are you a classroom?" and "Are you a person with lots of...stuff...written on your shirt?" My favorite guess last night was John Mc.E., who asked if I was a math geek and then, after my dismayed response of "no" (I put forth great effort to make sure I didn't look like I was dressing up as a math geek) said quickly, "No, I didn't mean your costume."

Okay, I'll tell you. I'm a cheat sheet!

I don't know if I've ever had so much fun putting together a costume. Originally I was just going to cover a shirt with math facts and formulas, but though I know and like math (clearly) I don't want to be entirely defined by my chosen field of study. Besides, cheat sheets are universal. In the end, I drew on math, biology, chemistry, geography, music, psychology, language, and literature.






Except for the Latin, I've had exposure to everything on here, but have forgotten some of it in the intervening years. That, of course, is why you have cheat sheets in the first place.

Happy Halloween, All Saints Day, and November!