I always thought I wanted to act and get dressed up for events-- plays, Halloween,etc. But when I would actually get to the event, I would get really shy, I wouldn't want to be there, I wouldn't understand how I had let my mom once talk me into what I was wearing, I always wanted to hide, run away, be invisible and I was always quite miserable. I don't know if it was because I was so incredibly shy or because I had an idea in my mind about how the the costume would look and it would never turn out that way.
Most moms bought their kids costumes at the store. But not my mom, she would sew all of our costumes by hand. I think she did this because we didn't really have any money and also because I think she was trying to be creative and use whatever she had around the farm that was 'different.'
Every year Kindergarten through eighth grade, I was in a all school Christmas play that I had to always dress up for. I went to a small Catholic school so did Bridget and Danny, Molly didn't go all the way thorough and I'm not sure Theresa did either. Timmy certainly didn't. He went to school all over the place (Vegas, California... but that's another story).
One year I had to be a sheep in the Christmas play. Sounds easy and harmless enough, until you realize that we raised sheep, lots of them, which meant we had a lot of real wool lying around the farm. The sheep were sheared every spring by sheep sheerer people and they would take the wool away so we didn't have any fresh wool but there were some bags of old wool in one of the sheds, I believe the wool was from the previous owner and/or my mom was keeping some of it to make into yarn one day-- she had grand envisions-- yarn was never made but we did have these 2 paddles in the house that had metal spikes on them that were full of wool that would come out from time to time. We would put the wool between them and pull and it would get really stringy but mostly we used them to hit each other with.
Anyway, we had old wool and I had to be a sheep, so what was my costume made out of? Old wool. And not just a little old wool, head to toe untreated old wool. I remember it smelled terrible, like old wool and old sheep. I was so embarrassed to go to school in it. We also grew corn, which mean we meant we had corn cobs lying around so these were also incorporated into the costume. Of course, why not. I don't remember the songs we sang or what we had to do, I just remember having to show up at school for the play in the costume that smelled and not talking to anyone because I was embarrassed.
Another time, I had to dress up for a Halloween 4H party. I never liked 4H the way it was. I never talked to anyone there and there was the whole bunny killing indicident. It was decided I would be the bride of Frankenstein. I don't think this was my idea, I think it was my moms because she had a old white curtain lying around and old white dress. She dressed me all in white, even painted my face white and made me go to the party with Bridget. I tried to be invisible in the corner the whole night because I was appalled to be wearing a curtain on my head. Bridget, on the other hand, seemed to be quite content wearing Mom's old shawl and having her cheeks painted red. Actually, if you look at these two photos, Bridget seemed quite happy anytime she had her cheeks painted with red circles.
