Matching Socks Are Scary

One of my most vivid Halloween memories is of a little red wagon. My father used to drag all three of us around our hilly neighborhood each and every October 31, until we were too big and too restless to be chauffered to our candy. My sister once went as a “kid wearing matching socks,” a costume that only my family understood. We all witnessed the ridiculous and colorful combination of knee-highs that she sported daily, and to see my little sister wearing clothes that matched was actually a pretty scary thing. She was not herself in matching socks.

Over a decade later, I realize my sister was much wiser than her years. First of all, her costume was very cost-efficient. Secondly, she chose to embrace an identity for one night that most of us choose to embrace every day.

An identity of matching. A guise of fitting in.

For a young and insecure me, to wear mismatching socks would have been difficult. In fact, I struggled with most of my Halloween costumes. My mother never let us buy them--we always had to figure it out ourselves. Growing up, I hated this, because I never looked like my friends. I never had the easy iParty ensemble for $29.99. I always felt awkward and unsettled and like my costume wasn’t good enough. For some reason, on the night meant for stepping out of the box, I never had the courage to step beyond the witch or princess or scarecrow. Even in high school I embraced the norm--to my horror, I was a cat more than once. A cat.

I hate cats, and also, why did I decide to join the female teenage army that inevitably forms every Halloween? Whiskered and meowing and cat-ear-headband-wearing, I used a day for being different to become more like everybody else. I lied to myself by saying my clever addition of black leggings made the costume less sexy, therefore I was not conforming.

Alex, since when is the sporting of black leggings not conforming?

It makes me sad to think of the hundreds of little Elsas and Annas that will be swarming the streets tonight. Granted, I do think Elsa’s dress is fabulous, and I am passionate about Disney. But what I am more passionate about is creativity. At a nostalgic 22, I regret that as a child, I was ashamed of my creative side. I felt weird and embarrassed when people called me “Book Girl” or asked, “Do you ever stop reading?”

I hid my imagination in public because to love stories and fantasy as much as I did was “nerdy.” I shrank like a mouse when people made fun of me for being shy and quiet; my choice was always to run away. Straight to places where everyone understood me. Like Narnia and the house where the Borrowers lived and the attic of The Little Princess.

I flourished in the magical pages of C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman, was best friends with clumsy Anne who lived at Green Gables and rambunctious Miranda from Miranda and the Movies. (For the record, my first real character crush was on the witty Bobby.) I chased impossible fairy tales on the back of a polar bear in East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

Despite all of these amazing characters to inspire me, I always looked at who I was on Halloween and chose to crawl further back into my shell, to melt into bashfulness behind a cliche witch hat. My sister looked at who she was on Halloween and decided to become the opposite. In short, I did nothing but hide who I was--and not in a fun costume way. In a way that actually highlighted my insecurities and not my imagination.

Witches are cool. Princesses are even cooler. But I wish I had the courage my sister had (and still has, by the way) to be something unique. I wish I had spent my childhood dressing up as something more like who I am and not like what the rest of my generation thought was the “it” costume. To pay homage to my friends and mentors who lived in the stories that made me feel alive.

I wish I had been Lyra from His Dark Materials. She and Pantalaimon comforted me many, many times when I felt alone after dance class or school. That was back in the days when the only way I knew how to make friends was to ask, "Do you like to read?"

Even better, I should have been Lucy from The Chronicles of Narnia. I certainly spent enough of my life with Aslan and Prince Caspian.

I could have been an awesome Scarlett O’Hara.

And when my friends showed up and looked at me like I was crazy for embodying a character that they knew nothing about, I should have said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”