I’ve told you how this was the summer that Charlotte discovered Star Wars, and her interest has yet to abate, although it’s not quite so feverish as it was initially. She’s got a lot on her plate pop-culture-wise: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Hannah Montana, and whatever else she’s obsessed with on any given day. Nonetheless, no sooner had the last DVD stopped playing than she had decided that she wanted to be Queen Amidala for Halloween.
Because it was August at the time, Bridget and I just sort of nodded and mumbled something supportive without really thinking about it. When she continued to insist on it and started to make noise about actually putting together a costume, however, the time came to start investigating. My chief concern was that even though Star Wars is still popular, most of the merchandising around the characters introduced in “The Phantom Menace” came out several years ago, including whatever Queen Amidala stuff there might have been (which probably wasn’t much in the first place given the boy-centric nature of Star Wars toys). The latest round of Star Wars toys would be based on the “Clone Wars” cartoon, in which she is only a fleeting appearance in one or two scenes. So we tried to soft-pedal the idea to the kid, but Charlotte went right to the obvious solution: Mom can make my costume!
Now, if you remember Queen Amidala as she appeared at first in “The Phantom Menace”, she was wearing that imposing Oriental-style robe and massive wig/headdress with white facepaint. Good luck trying to make that. Luckily, Charlotte didn’t want that; she wanted one of the later costumes where the queen, now called Padme, wears something a little more attainable and action-ready. Given my daughter’s penchant for “fancy” stuff, this was welcome news. Since I personally do not engage in thinking about holidays one day earlier than absolutely necessary, I let the subject drop out of my active mind right there and figured we’d come back to it sometime around mid-October. Bridget, however, was smart enough to start looking around to see what she could find, since in the end it was going to be her problem if she had to make such a costume.
When I was a kid, our Halloween costumes were always the kind you bought at K-Mart or some other department store that were basically a nylon suit with a picture of the character on the front and a molded mask that sort-of looked like the character, and that was that. But Halloween is ever so much more complicated now, and if a costume isn’t realistic and convincing, you might as well stay home. Fortunately, the Internet provides all things to all people, and it took no time for Bridget to find just the right thing. (I don’t know if that’s the actual site where she bought it, because I think she paid a little less than the price indicated there, but that’s the costume for sure).
The costume arrived one day soon after and actually sat out on the front porch in the rain overnight because we had no idea it was there. The box was a bit damp, but the costume was inside a plastic bag, so no damage. Since my den is full of boxes anyway, and the box was fairly nondescript, it was easy to hide it in plain sight without Charlotte ever noticing it.
As soon as October hit the calendar, though, the kid took it up a notch, bugging us about when was Mommy going to make her costume and trying to get us to take her to a Halloween store that has popped up in a local empty storefront. After many assurances from her that she wasn’t going to be freaked out by the Halloween place, we agreed to go over. However, as soon as she got within six feet of the door, she got scared and wouldn’t go in. So Bridget decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and gave Charlotte her costume early.
You might guess that since then, our young Jedi princess has looked for any and every available opportunity to wear the costume. There was much lobbying to wear it to school the following Monday, which we quickly and firmly vetoed. We did relent and let her bring the cape one day for “toy day”, with the blood promise that it would return home in pristine condition. It did. Her enthusiasm has subsided as October has gone along, but I’m waiting for one last burst of insanity that last week of the month. Meanwhile, she has begun to lobby me to dress up as the Sith Lord for Halloween.
Ain’t gonna happen.
