jordenf v2.0

So I’m sitting here trying to figure out what to be for Halloween.  I’m going to a party this year, I haven’t dressed up since 2004 and need a costume but I’m a little bit lost.

Now I’ve never been a huge fan of Halloween, I always figured it was kind of a weird concept… you tell kids all year never to talk to strangers especially if they tell you to come to their van or house with the promise of candy, but then all of a sudden on one day you tell your kids it’s cool to travel to 45 different stranger’s houses and accept candy from all of them in a 2 hour window… Oh they’ve made a haunted house!?  It’s scary in there!?  Oh yeah go ahead little Johnny venture right into that person’s house it will be fun!  That’s kind of messed up.

But I digress… this post isn’t about overweight kids only getting exercise because they have to walk from door to door to get more candy, and it’s not about that lame old lady that tries to kill children silently by giving out bags of peanuts, and it’s certainly not about the 14-year-old pyromaniacs who blow their allowances on firecrackers to shoot at each other all night (they should put that money into an RRSP at 3.5%… they’ll be stoked about it when they can buy 10 times as many firecrackers in 2035)… this post is about my Ninja Turtle costume from 1989…

My Michelangelo Ninja Turtles costume was quite possibly the most bad-ass costume known to all 6-year-old’s in the late ’80′s.  It was made out of a quality child labour made cotton/poly blend and had a proper padded and stuffed shell on the back.  This shell wasn’t just some crappy sewn on afterthought either… you could actually do a turtle spin on this sucker.  I had the orange sashes for my knees and elbows so that folks wouldn’t get me mixed up with that sensitive girl Leonardo or Mr. Bad Mood Raphael and they especially wouldn’t think I was Donatello, who had to carry around a huge staff to make up for what he lacked below his utility belt.  And of course I had one orange Michelangelo bandana for around my eyes that tied up perfectly with just enough extra fabric hanging down the back so that it didn’t look like someone just cut up a tie-died tube sock and pulled it over my face.

And then of course there was the most important part and my prized possession… the Nunchucks.  Now these Nunchucks were made before the government became a bunch of wussies and really started regulating toys for safety concerns.  They were constructed out of a hard plastic that could honestly knock your front-side out if used properly (luckily they weren’t), and they fit perfectly into my pleather utility belt ready to be drawn out at any time for a serious beat down if I ever ran into the Foot Clan.

So here I am thinking how awesome this costume was and figured I’d Google it to see if I could find an image of what it looked like and maybe if it’s still cool enough and as an homage to my youth I’d bring it back… big mistake.

Now I am praying that the pictures that surround this blog are not of the same costume I was once so proud of.  Have you ever had something that as a kid you thought was super rad and then later on in life you realized how lame it actually was?  Example A. I used to have a buzz cut with a rat-tail and racing stripes shaved into the side of my head… I used to rock this haircut while wearing a pair of flourescent Jammer shorts pulled up really high with my hyper-colour t-shirt tucked in, and it only took me until ’91 to realize that this was not the correct way to go about business… unfortunately the Ninja Turtle costume took me an extra 18 years to figure out.

I would love to blame this debacle on my parents for letting me venture outside into the mean streets of Vancouver thinking I could beat up anything that came my way while only wearing a pair of green pajamas, and to be honest I was halfway through dialing the phone to give my mom and dad a good talking to when I remembered that this story actually probably got worse…

Most Halloween’s in Vancouver were too cold to go outside in just your costume, which means I probably had to wear my winter coat, mittens and a touque out as well… I had to stop dialing the phone as I lost sight of the numbers through my slowly forming tears… I had just gone from the most awesome looking crime fighting hero to a 6-year-old wearing green pajamas, a puffy ski jacket, mittens and a yellow Canucks touque with a pom-pom on the top of it… I mean you probably couldn’t even see my Nunchucks!  Although I guess it wouldn’t have mattered anyways, because have you ever tried to swing a pair of Nunchucks with mittens on?  Exactly.

Well this has been a pretty emotional day, good luck with all your costume searching and if you need some more ideas on lame costumes check out my guest writer Jennifer’s post on Weird Halloween Costumes.

Cheers!

jordenf