Late Costume

In sixth grade, Halloween fell on a Saturday, so my homeroom teacher told us all to wear our costumes to school on Friday. My friend Alex raised his hand to say he’d be out of town on Friday so could he dress up on Monday instead? Our teacher was like, “I mean…sure?”

So Halloween comes and goes, and Monday morning, Alex walks into school dressed head-to-toe as Zorro. The whole Zorro deal: big black hat, sword, silky little eye mask, a ruffled black blouse with this loosely-laced plunge down the front, and as I remember it, some pointy little ankle booties.

He looked great and very Zorro-y; and I still think it’s pretty brave to be the only person at school in costume, but we didn’t even make it to homeroom before the vice principal took him down to the office and in an act of just…absurd cruelty, enforced the no hats, masks, or weapons policy. He was stripped of his accessories and left with just this unexplained, extremely poofy lace-up blouse on a random Monday in November. I can still hear those sassy lil’ boots clicking SO ANGRILY through the halls!

Name changed cause I haven’t talked to him in over a decade and don’t know how he feels about this fun story or the fact that at least one person never forgot about it and loved it enough to put it in their internal newsletter at a bank.