Road Trippin’
I am lucky to be alive after last Halloween.
My friends and I decided to dress up as characters from the action-sports-themed Nickelodeon classic, “Rocket Power.” I drew the short straw and was forced to be the female character, Reggie Rocket.
Being that the characters in the show loved extreme sports, my friends and I decided it would be appropriate to add extreme sports equipment to our costumes.
I drove out on a Razor scooter that night, and my friends and I had a blast riding around the Georgetown neighborhood.
On our way back to campus later that night, we ran into the steepest street in Georgetown—the cobblestone road between 35th Street and M Street.
Before my friends knew it, I was idiotically riding down the hill at full speed on a poorly-made scooter. To avoid crashing into the heavy oncoming traffic, I slid and skidded out to safety, in true Rocket fashion.
Triumphantly, I looked up to my friends at the top of the hill. A crowd had gathered and erupted in thunderous applause.
I was alive. Stupid, but alive.
—Tom Bosco (MSB ‘12)
Politically Incorrect
Junior year of high school, my friend and I decided to take advantage of the Army-Navy Surplus store and dress up as generals. Upon arriving at the store, we were shocked to discover that modern era military garb is actually quite expensive—so we decided to go throwback and be generals from World War II.
As we drove into school, I thought we looked great in our costumes. Walking into the center of school, however, the smile quickly faded from my face. Most people were giving us strange, even disgusted looks—others laughing hysterically. I was puzzled … the war in Iraq wasn’t that unpopular, was it?
Being thrifty and buying the WWII-era costumes was our mistake. Everyone mistook me and my friend for Nazis.
—George D’Angelo (MSB ‘12)
I Am A Vampire
In October 2001, I came home from fifth grade to find a princess costume spread across my bed. While this doesn’t seem to be a particularly unusual garment to find in an eleven-year old girl’s room, I took its presence as a serious affront. This was not my costume—this was a symbol of my mother’s desire to convert me into a precious ballerina, and to end my bloodsucking streak.
Before Twilight was popular, before True Blood was a hit series, I was really into vampires. It all started when I was five years old and my parents dressed up my older brother and me as a pair of undead siblings for Halloween. For some reason, while my brother moved on, I spent the next six years dodging the “what should I be for Halloween this year?” conundrum with my go-to black cape, fake blood, and plastic teeth. For six years I preyed happily on hapless Power Rangers, werewolves, and pumpkin-babies—but finally my mother had enough.
She may have clad me in fake finery for the evening and curbed my cravings for trick-or-treater blood, but when packing for Georgetown this year, I had just enough room for a floor-length black cape and a can of black hairspray. Watch out, sexy bunnies!
—Emma Forster (COL ‘13)
Live Long And Prosper
Star Trek: The Next Generation captured my imagination at a very young age. I was probably the only eight-year-old in America playing with a Patrick Stewart action-figure.
There was one character that I loved more than all the others, Lieutenant Worf, who was the Klingon Chief of Security for the Starship Enterprise. In second grade, well before I learned that Star Trek fandom (like a drug addiction) was something to be ashamed of, I insisted to my mother that I wanted to go as Lieutenant Worf, an African-Klingon, for Halloween.
The year I went as Lieutenant Worf no one said much of anything, though I did have to explain the costume to more people than I thought I would have to.
Looking back on it now, I realize that I essentially dressed up in black face for my costume, along with a wig and the requisite Klingon forehead-bumps. Years later, when I asked my mom how she could let me out of the house in black face, she said, “It’s okay, it wasn’t a real person. It was an alien.”
—Dan Newman (SFS ‘10)
