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Fai
I spent a quiet day on Halloween this year. No trick-o-treaters came to ring our doorbell, and my children, now too old for going from door to door to ask for candy, decided to stay at home.
It was not always like this. Before we returned to Hong Kong, Halloween was a big occasion for us. The school that my two sons attended holds a Halloween parade every year. Classes are called off (取消), and all the students, from kindergarten to the 9th grade, come out and march in the school ground in costume (服裝、裝束). Many would buy ready-made costumes from the stores. These tend to be ghosts and monsters and other ghoulish (鬼怪、怪異) creatures, and as such, are quite boring. Just as many would let their imagination run free and take the trouble to make their own costumes.
I am quite experienced in this regard. My older son went through all ten years in that school, while the younger was in the 3rd grade when we moved to Hong Kong. All in all, I easily made more than 10 costumes in those years.
Of course, it was not always easy to come up with ideas for costumes. Weeks before Halloween, my sons and I would sit down together to talk about what costumes they would like. In some years, they decided to wear different things. For example, during the 2004 election year, my older son decided to appear as a ballot box (投票箱), while my younger one wanted to be a football player. Three years ago, however, they wanted to wear something that indicated that they were brothers. For a long time, we could not think of anything appropriate.
What objects usually come together, if not in pairs, I asked myself? Chopsticks? Knife and fork? Salt and pepper? Coffee and tea? None of these are easier to make. In the meantime, the weeks were flying by. We were only days away from Halloween. Then, it occurred to me that one of them could be a bottle of ketchup while the other a bottle of mustard (芥末).
I can manage the simplest needlework, but sewing a costume is beyond me (超出我能力). Besides, there was not enough time for me to make anything fancy. And so I resorted to the most labour-saving (省力的) materials and tools: cardboard and a lot of glue and staples.
First, I cut off two pieces of cardboard, one in red and the other in yellow. I carefully wrapped them around my two children under their arms, which would serve as the body of the bottles. To prevent them from sliding down, I attached straps to the cardboard and looped them around their shoulders. Then I proceeded to make hats with the cardboard, shaping them as best as I could to make them look like bottle caps. They had a red sweat shirt and a yellow sweat shirt, which they put on under the cardboard. Just to make sure that they would not be mistaken for other things, I wrote in bold black letters "ketchup" on the red cardboard and "mustard" on the yellow cardboard.
My children were very happy with the result. They tried the costumes at home and I made adjustments here and there. On the whole, the costumes seemed to hold up very well.
On the day of the march, they joined the rest of the students on the ground. I, together with the other parents, was standing on the sideline as the parade went by. I spotted my two children from a distance and for a while, everything looked fine. Then I noticed something peculiar(奇怪的)with the way they walked. They were taking very short steps, and the cardboard seemed to go up and down with every step. Immediately, I could tell what the trouble was. They were wrapped up in cardboard from the armpits to the legs. Since cardboard does not bend or give like cloth, they might as well be walking in a wooden barrel. It was fine when they tried the costumes at home, but I forgot to ask them to walk around in them.
Nevertheless, it was a great success. To round off the day, I got a picture of the two of them in costume, eating a hot dog with lots of ketchup and mustard on it. ■kingfaitam@gmail.com
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