It’s Never Too Late to be Marge Simpson

My husband wanted to be a “walker” – one of the zombies from the hit TV series, The Walking Dead, but I talked him out of it. I told him that there would be a kazillion zombies at the Halloween Party, primarily because of the TV series. Instead, I talked him into being Homer Simpson & I was Marge.

Plagued by Marge’s pantyhose that just would not stay up, it came home to me in the most uncomfortable way that One Size Fits All on those pantyhose packages is a misnomer & should be changed to One Size Fits Some – Occasionally. Our costumes were cool, though & we already had them from last year. We bought them for a part in an amateur film we were making & then didn’t use them for Halloween. So even with the pantyhose malfunction, the costumes were pretty cool & I sort of started liking blue hair.

I have a good husband. In the past he has let me talk him into being a caveman, a Klingon, a Sumo wrestler & a practically naked Adam to my Eve; all of which won prizes for us in costume contests year after year.  As it turned out, there wasn’t even ONE zombie at the party but we DID win an Applebee’s Restaurant gift card for having the Most Humorous costumes in that category. That somehow made up for the fact that had we been zombies we would have once again been unique at that particular annual party.  But we may not have been prize winners.

I held my blue hair on my lap as we were driving home from the party & my mind kept zipping back to the evening, our friends & the costumes they’d chosen. What is it about reasonably normal adults that turns us, once a year at these Halloween parties into headless horse people, Things 1 & 2, heroes from the Firefly series, Marge & Homer Simpson & polar bears from the Coke Christmas commercials?

What I think is that life has gotten harder. The media doesn’t allow us to turn off the radio or skip buying a Sunday newspaper to get away from all that’s wrong or bad in this world like our parents & grandparents did. It’s in our face … all the time … every minute. It’s on TV, on our iPads & on our Smart phones. We have live-action “MovieTone News” 25 hours a day & in some cases we may even be getting addicted to knowing what’s going on “out there” on a continuing basis.

We are forced to deal with a physical world filled with eyesight, joints & memories that fail, cancer, abuse, gum disease, hair loss & sexual dysfunction. There are weapons & diseases of mass destruction that even a little blue pill can’t fix. Heaven forbid that we should take a trip abroad & NOT be expecting to be quarantined for at least the first 21 days after our return home.  And we certainly want to avoid treatment at any hospital in the state of Texas with or without an excellent reputation. If you stay up-to-date with the news you know that THIS is kind of our Zombie Apocalypse, just a decade or two behind World War Z.

And I thought pantyhose in One Size Fits Practically No One was a problem.

So, no matter what our station in life or how old we may be, for that one day a year… our Halloween Party … Bonnie & Carl become Mal & Zoe & embark on a space adventure aboard Serenity. Chris & Kenny go out on a limb & become two polar bears wearing Coke logos & unusual leg warmers, & Willy & I become Homer & Marge Simpson. We play dumb games like Pin the Tail on the Klingon, Return Spock’s Brain to its original owner & anatomical position, & we toss simulated planets into simulated black holes that just happen to be buckets stuck in holes cut into a sheet of cardboard. We take an evening off to reacquaint ourselves with our “inner children” &, as God said & probably intended, “That is good.”

Young or old, as long as we can still fantasize & play … even as polar bears adrift on steadily melting ice, then there is probably hope for us. And that’s why I think we do it … take such delight in that one day a year when it’s really OK to step into the often funny world of our fantasies & just have a go at it.  It gets us away for a little while & when we come back, our perspective has been refreshed & we somehow just know we can keep on keeping on.

Even with the pantyhose, it’s never too late & you’re never too old or hardened by reality to be Marge Simpson.

We can be “walkers” next year.