Halloween Costumes

I used to wear Halloween costumes to school. And not just at Halloween. When I was in preschool, I would dress up in a costume every day. If my parents tell you the story, they include how all the other kid’s parents would wait at school until I arrived so they could see what character I was for the day.

I was a four-year-old girl, so often I wore one of my princess costumes. My favorite was a pink silk dress with white polka dots and ruffles. But, I would also often wear the white furry puppy costume, with floppy ears and blue spots. I would carry my silver star wand on the days I was a princess. And at least with my parents, I preferred to communicate through barks on the days I was a dog.

There was only one instance when my parents ever questioned my choices. If I came out of my room as a puppy on a ridiculously warm day, they would ask me if I was certain about wearing full-body fur in the heat. And if I said I still wanted to be a puppy that day, that was the end of the conversation. They just made sure I had shorts and a t-shirt on under the costume in case I did get too warm during the school day.

My parents never once made me feel strange about wearing costumes to school, so I never even considered wondering what other people thought about it. Looking back, they could have handled it so differently. They could have fought with me every morning and encouraged me to dress more like a normal kid. They could’ve made me worry about fitting in. But they didn’t.

Actually, what happened instead is that other kids in my class started wearing costumes to school sometimes too. I don’t know how those conversations went in their houses. Maybe their parents were okay with it and maybe they weren’t. But I do know at least several other kids weren’t discouraged from wearing costumes if they wanted to. I think that’s pretty cool.

I never felt like the strange kid that wore costumes to school and I don’t remember ever being made fun of for it. Instead, somehow I felt like the cool kid that got to wear costumes to school.  I think when you are four, you can only be embarrassed or not confident in yourself if someone teaches you to feel embarrassed or ashamed. My parents never taught me those things. They just loved me and let me be my weird little self.

Maybe I would have grown up to be the same person I am today if I didn’t get to wear Halloween costumes to preschool everyday. But somehow I don’t think so. Even if every other little detail of my life at four years old was exactly the same. I think if my parents had discouraged me from wearing costumes, I would be different. If they had taught me then to question my confidence in myself, that could have changed everything.

But they let me dress like a princess, or a puppy, or a western desperado. And maybe it was just luck that the other kids didn’t make fun of me. Either way, what I learned from preschool is that there is always at least one other person that will think you are worth being friends with for being exactly who you are. I’ve never stopped believing that to be true.

When I stopped wearing costumes all the time, I still carried around a plastic alligator I would fill with Cheerios for my snacks. I went through a phase when I always wore turtlenecks tucked into leggings. And I wasn’t embarrassed taking the short bus back to school from my high school math class in the eighth grade. Even in high school, I was fine with being the only kid that would bring my homework to the bleachers of the hockey games.

The point is, there was always something that made me at least a little different from other people. There still is, and I’ve never been ashamed about it. So maybe it won’t matter if you compliment the kid in the dinosaur costume at the grocery store. But maybe it will. Maybe accepting and encouraging the tiny humans you know for all their quirks will make every bit of difference.