Little Red Riding Hood

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I love dressing up (even now) as someone completely different, I love the decorations, I love the good old fashioned fun of trick or treating.  When I was a kid,  I loved it ever more.  Halloween was when I got to be someone different than who I was, I got to dress up, wear makeup, transform myself.  The only problem was I didn't JUST want to wear my costume on Halloween night.  I wanted to wear it all the time, from the time I got it, until it fell apart.  Luckily for me, my birthday is right around Halloween.  So every year I would have a costume party.  An afternoon into evening party, where my many cousins and siblings and friends could come and dress up, usually the weekend before Halloween. So not only did you get to wear your costume more than once, you got to wear it BEFORE Halloween.  Now this seems like a great plan for a child who enjoyed pretend, but for a klutzy, haphazard kid such as myself, it didn't always work out for the best.

When I was seven,  I went as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween.  I had the cutest red cape (with a hood!!), a red dress, black tights and red shoes.  I carried a little basket and had rosy red cheeks.  The day of my birthday party, I was running around with my cousins and friends, playing in the backyard.  I tripped, and not being able to catch myself, fell and scraped my knee on the back porch.  I was fine, but my tights were ripped.  This didn't bother me a bit, because they were hot, itchy and constricting.  So I went back to my room and took them off, not really bothering to tell anyone.  Then I went back out and played.  Except this time, I went out in the front yard to greet more people.  Running along the sidewalk, I tripped (again) and this time I really scraped my knees up on the concrete. I don't remember being in pain, probably because I was so used to falling and hurting myself that a little pain wasn't an issue.  What did bother me was that the blood from my knee was running into my white socks.  Tights could be replaced, but these socks were special, and they wouldn't be white anymore.  My nurse mom fixed me right up, and we continued on.  But on Halloween night, I remember being sad because my socks were ruined.  I wonder what happened to that costume.  It was a good one!