And so it went, Halloween ’10: Hermoine (the bookish Harry Potter sidekick) at left, and the Fairy Godmother at right. Hermoine shown pre-tie, which went on moments later. And shown with books, which were jettisoned some moments after that. Â They were great as a prop for the costume contest held at our neighborhood’s annual Halloween Block Party, but too damn heavy to lug around when a person has to focus her energies on dragging a huge bag o’ candy behind her for a coupla blocks.
Cloak remained about as off-shoulder/dilapidated the whole time. She’s not one for haberdashery details.
The Fairy Godmother, on the other hand, is, and had a wonderful time, not least because he wore sensible shoes for walking, not the sparkly dress-up things he picked out at the store. Which were not made for walking.
In other news, yet again, the Halloween Candy Fairy has paid a visit to the household. What is the Halloween Candy Fairy, many of you might ask? I’m glad you asked. She/he visits the households of kids fortunate enough to have hauled in more candy than they can reasonably consume, even if meted out in small doses over a month. Â You pick out the candy you want (exact # of pieces can be negotiated; amounts vary across households), and leave the rest in your bag. In our household we leave the bags near the front door. In the morning the eager moppets hustle out of bed, dental health intact and incipient diabetes at bay, and rush to see what nifty giftie the Halloween Candy Fairy left them in their bags. The lore is that the Halloween Fairy takes your extra candy and gives it to other kids less fortunate.
Laugh all you like, but it’s a great way to eat most of your kid’s Halloween candy, guilt free.
I’m laughing at the genius of it! Halloween Fairy, I’m stashing that one away for a time such that I should need it…
Your son has many a fairy godmother role models. (we are here) Specifically, our son, Hugo (11) – who made the correct Halloween decision and simply carried his four inch heels slung over his shoulders with his kicks firmly on his feet.
This way, Mama, the neighbors will still be able to see my full ensemble.
Solid thinking, Hugo.
Can you fix my eyelash? Its crooked. Tacky.
Got it.
Don’t I look polite?
Completely.
Do you think the Blanks will call me Brokeback?
(as the world passes down my gullet, ploughs my stomach, exits with a feeling I can only describe as Vietnam)
Probably, Babe. We’ll skip em.
No way! I want them to see my makeup – sissy did a stellar job.
Lead the way, Hugo. We are right behind you.
And me behind you, behind him.
(With thanks to Ruth) Whither thou goest, we will go; where thou lodgest, we wlll lodge: thy people are clearly already our people, and thy wisdom (I hope) ours, if not now, then one day. Where thou livest fully, will we, and there we will be, full, together, all.
Thank you so, so much. And welcome to you both! Yay, conversation and inspiration!
The Fairy Godmother looks ethereal in that light, as I’m sure was intended. I’m chuckling, though, at the titles Hermione’s books. Happy to see another family whose love of HP is as geeky as our own. I wish we lived closer–our son made a darn fine Harry last night. It would have been fun to see them charm the neighborhood together.
(Crafty hint: Two yards of sparkly black netting makes a great “invisibility cloak” for young wizards.)
Haloo, Dana! I definitely can use crafty hints. I forsee hours of fun (and marginal visibility) in our future. Also, yes: I looked up the whole Hogwarts library online, and the girl child picked titles she was familiar with. Already an uncompromising scholar, that one. No sloppy filler for her.
A nice side note: at school on Friday, the kids changed into their outfits after lunch, and she was amazed to find that the kid next to her, some guy she may never have given the time of day to (yes, well, right: she’s still learning to tell the time of day), was dressing up as none other than Harry himself. As they speed-trotted around the neighborhood on their parade route, no matter what obstacles appeared (parking meter; Baba with camera; panhandler) she never let more than five feet separate her from him. If this persists, I think we have a pretty clear-cut path to her heart. (1) Carries off a Harry Potter impersonation with moderate credibility; and (2) tolerates hours on end in silence, reading. A dream date. It is too bad we don’t live closer.
When I was a kid my parents never let me do Halloween. They said it was an irrelavant American import that promotes begging and commercialism (even though everybody knows its just a bit of fun for the kids and a great excuse to dress up!). My reply to them was “awwww, pleeeaaasee?” but nope, I never got to trick or treat or go to dress up parties. But, now I’m moved out for the first time I got to dress up (in a home made Astronaut costume – dream come true) and carve a pumpkin for the first time, although I felt a little bit too old to go trick or treating so my housemates and I threw a party!
The Fairy Godmother looks fantastic by the way, what great tast he has!
Beautiful costumes, both.
Around here, kids are talking about the Sugar Fairy, not the Halloween Candy fairy. Some friends of Curious Girl’s were here for dinner last night and one said, “You know, the Sugar Fairy will come if you leave out candy.” “Really?!?” the others leaned in and begged for details, and the story emerged that the Sugar Fairy will leave you whatever toy you ask for in the note you leave with the candy, provided you have left enough candy, and you have asked her to come back at a future date (since she might not have the toy right with her that night).
CG promptly decided that she was going to leave candy out the next day for the Sugar Fairy. Tonight, she weighed out a pound (that being the girls’ estimation of how much candy was worth a zhu zhu pet, the little hot toy of the moment). But an hour later she came back to say that she just couldn’t do it. It was too much candy to give away. And there’s always next year to ask the Sugar Fairy to come. And really, she didn’t want to give the Sugar Fairy that much candy all at once b/c it just isn’t healthy. She wonders whether we think the Sugar Fairy ever eats anything healthy. Perhaps your Halloween Candy fairy expertise could answer that last one?
I like the time delay feature built in there. The asking for the return at a future date. Nice touch.
I have to say I think we’ve been fortunate enough not to have been pressed too intently for details about our Halloween Candy Fairy’s dietary habits. The story I have in my head is that s/he takes the candies around to other poor kids who have crummy neighborhoods to trick-or-treat in, meaning they scored Not Enough Candy to rot their teeth and speed them on their way to incipient diabetes. Or some such.
It was really hysterical to watch the kids’ conversation about the Sugar Fairy. I thought that the 8 and 7 year old would twig to the fact that this sounds like a parental ploy, but they were trading little details and wondering about how it all worked (2 of the girls had already made an arrangement with the Sugar Fairy and 2 of them had never heard of it). I love every one of these moments of fairydom in their conversations.
And, I love that you are not minding that I’m showing up here a bit late to discuss post-Halloween matters. Ever welcoming, you are, and I’m glad of it.
O, heavens heavens. I am the poster gal for late. Late is my middle name. I wrote the book on late. They call me Mr. Late (for whatever perverse reason, I flashed on Sidney Portier saying “They call me Mr. Tibbs” right there). I read the book A Geography of Time simply because I am so late (it was fascinating; my take-home was that I would be a fish in water over in Tahiti: when’s dinner? later today. how much later? oh, you know, when it gets dark? etc.). I have come to believe that either everyone else in the culture that the stork dropped me into seems to be earlier than me. Just about every time. Incredible. I often think the stork mistook a whole continent and was really aiming for another one entirely.
But also: all the big, fun topics have a timelessness to them anyhow, don’t they?
I had added — and then subtracted, since it got to be too lengthy — a bit about how I think that we got less close questioning on our Halloween Candy Fairy (sometimes called simply the Halloween Fairy) because we have a critical mass of other Halloween Fairy adherents in the peer group our kids run in. So it’s reflected back enough as to pull it away from our own immediate parental purview (always suspicious).
Fairies, in general, are fantastic things.
We have a similar thing. Miguel got a book. Zeca is still negotiating – she wants cash. ha ha.
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