Parents can be so cruel.

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday- bit of a repost of an old favorite. You're welcome.

Halloween 1983.  A fifth grade me had just moved to Connecticut from Boston.  I hadn't really had a chance to get to know people that well and  also had the handicaps of being pretty shy and a touch clueless.   That year my school had,  in an effort to promote Halloween safety, handed out little reflector stickers for us to put on our costumes so cars would see us,  ibso facto not mow us down leaving us for dead (and almost as tragic to me: candiless).

Anyway, as an obedient, rule-follwoing kid, I took this shit pretty seriously.  School authorities had SERIOUSLY ADVISED us to wear these stickers.  That's pretty much all I needed to hear (Plus, STICKERS! I LOVE STICKERS!). I didn't need a "We TOLD you to wear the stickers, but you didn't listen and now you are dead. Yeah, "sorry" about that. And sorry your little brother is eating all your Snickers" on my head.

Dressed as a 50's girl,  I think I am the shit.  I LOVE D the 50s and was pumped that I was able to wear my square dancing skirt that twirled awesomely (truthfully, the only reason why I took the class was for the skirt). The finishing touch was  my newly acquired reflective safety stickers.   But for where oh for where to display the two, small, orange, circle reflective stickers? (there were more, and in various sizes but I didn't want to overpower my awesome costume,...naturally).

To recap:

Tween girl...

2, small, circle, orange, stickers...

I made my debut at the bottom on the stairs.  What I wouldn't know until some years later was  my parents shared an a couple of  incredulous looks.

I mean, what do you say when your ten year old comes bounding down the stairs looking like this?

We won't even get into the subtle  makeup application. Welcome to Whore Island, kid. 

 So after shooting each other looks of "dude, any idea why your daughter is wearing nipples on her sweater?",  they snickered, took this picture, and we rolled.  I do recall them asking me "what up with the stickers on your sweater, Jen?" and I innocently advised them that I was just doing what the school  safety folks had told me to do so the cars would see me.  They were like,"okay,  okay... fair enough,"  and let it go. Meaning, they LET ME WALK OUT THE DOOR LOOKING LIKE THIS.

Assholes.  The both of them.

As per my  previous post on Halloween costuming and regard to my mother's "mad makeup skilz", here's the clan of us,  most of us still sporting my mom's silly rosy circle cheeks  (I guess this was the year Kate went off grid with just a witch nose  and this was the year I was considered old enough to be allowed to dip my own hand in the rouge pot (clearly), since we are without Mom's telltale red circle markings.)

Little did I know, with exception of a 3 year old Brian, the lot of them were probably laughing at my orange nipples.

Comments

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HILARIOUS!!!!

Obviously, your parents were extremely awesome for letting you walk out in public like that. It's the little things like this that make parenting worthwhile.=)

p.s. I hope you don't mind, but I liked your birthday story so much, I copied it inside my post. I can take it down if you'd like, but I felt that it was very important for everyone to know what a hero you are.

[HollowSquirrel]

Well, I'm blaming your parents for the coughing fit I just suffered through owing to this whole reflective nipple and whore make-up debacle. Seriously. Classic.

[Lauren]

HAHAHAHAHAHA! That is absolutely classic.

[jenfromboston]

Elizabeth, feel free - and I'm flattered!

HS- I am a standing exhibit as to why tweens should not be allowed near the makeup.

[Fraulein N]

I LOVE this. You are a brave woman to share this with us. That very well could have been me wearing glow-in-the-dark pasties, as I was a freakishly obedient child as well.