It's Time for My Annual Halloween Rant....

Those who have been with this blog from it's beginning, (It's three years this October), know that every year, we go all out for the holiday, and every year, I subject myself to the annual pilgrimage to the tacky costume store.  Last year, I stayed on hold for two hours to complain about a costume that would be considered vulgar and desperate even in the red light district of Amsterdam.    The quest to find outfits that neither pimp my girls or gore/gross me out for my boys while allowing for some sense of fun and dignity has almost forced me to learn how to sew.  

The kids, being kids, are always interested in being something new, and recycled costumes take real salesmanship. We have remade existing outfits from one thing into another, a ring wraith into a witch for example, an elf into a knight, and a princess into a fairy, but this has always been after a serious search at said costume store for alternatives.   Fortunately, my kids are starting to get wise to the idea that this store is really sort of sad with it's obsession over costumes for "adults" and I use the term loosely, gross and goth displays that are front and center next to the toddler section, and exceptionally limited options for boys (Star Wars, monsters and superheroes), and girls (princesses, witches and as my daughter explained it, weird girls) --she means slutty but doesn't know it.  

Of course, no trip to such a place is complete without the accidental discovery of the profoundly wrong; and while my oldest and I took pains to seclude the masses, I still found what had to be the single most objectionable costume in the store while searching for a viking costume.  If there is a worse one, I really don't want to know --a priest costume with a built in springy phallus dubbed "The Happy Priest."   Ha. Ha. Ha.  Anti-Catholic, crude and a sight gag all in one.   I complained to the manager that this was bigoted, crude and inappropriate in a store that sells to teens and toddlers or for that matter, Catholics or anyone with a hint of decent sense.   He pointed out that he didn't order the items, these were simply what was sent.   "That's a cop out." I told him, and he gave me the business card for the general office of the company.  Unfortunately, I had already purchased 7 of the 8 items and had the last item we needed in my daughter's hands when I found this repulsive item or I would have walked out.

I have sat on hold.  I have sent an email.  I am still trying to lodge a complaint with an actual person.  In the meantime, that sewing machine is starting to look not nearly so scary as the prospect of rewarding a company that thinks so little of children's sensibilities or anyone else's for that matter.