by The Funky Olive

Created on: October 23, 2006   Last Updated: April 12, 2007

When I was a kid, there was little around for store bought costumes, other than a handful of those plastic type ones with the costume graphics printed on the front, and tied in the back. They came with one of those suffocating plastic masks that never seemed to have the tiny eye holes in the precise spot, and the breathing holes in the nose were minuscule! Instead, we'd have a gander in the home linen close, our parents closets, or make a trip to the local thrift store to put together our own costumes.

There were lots of ghosts, from the white sheets in the linen closet.

Lots of girls dressed as gypsies, with their mothers white blouses, flowing skirts, scarves tied around their heads, and waists, and big gold hoop earrings. Oh, and lots of gaudy makeup!

Lots of the boys would dress as hobos in their fathers old work clothes, some black charcoal rubbed on their faces to denote they needed a shave, and they would carry hobo luggage, which consisted of a bandanna with some socks or something in it tied on the end of a stick.

If we had access to gray wigs, we'd dress up as old people.

Witches with long flowing black dresses and a black pointy hat we'd have our parents help us construct from cardboard, black garbage bags and tape.

A hippie was another popular costume. We'd tie shoestrings or other long thin fabric strips around our foreheads, paint peace signs on our cheeks with creamy eye make-up, wear sunglasses and dress in jeans, preferably tattered and frayed on the hems and colorful tunic styled tops with a vest.

Angel costumes we made from long flowing white dresses, and we'd take a very long length of cord and criss cross it across our torso, which would help to hold on our cardboard wings in the back. For a halo, we'd construct one out of attaching pipe cleaners together to make a circle with a stick that we would wrap around our pony tails so the circle would rise above our heads.

I remember one boy at school that made a television costume out of a cardboard box. He had a picture on the front for some TV show, but I don't remember what it was. Back then it was pretty cool though, and very original!

It was a lot of fun, and most of all, it was always creative, as we didn't have the availability of the much better quality of store bought costumes there are today.

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