‘There is nothing scarier than a teenage girl’
A spirit once haunted my house. And it wasn’t just at Halloween. An alien presence took possession of The Child when she was, oh, 14 or so, and stuck around for about three years. Three very long, very frightening years.
Before she was possessed by this alien force — let’s call it the Spirit of Teen Girlhood — The Child was a normal, happy little sprite. An inventive sort who insisted, for unexplained reasons of her own, on dressing as objects for Halloween. As the years went by, she was, among other things, a Number Two Pencil, a Bloomingdale’s Bag, and a Pre-War Building. (Check her out as a Strawberry in ‘Happy Ho-made Halloween’.) Here are a couple more:
The Child as a candle, complete with flame. And flame-colored socks
Cut a Child-sized hole in a cardboard box, drape newspaper-stuffed leggings over the front, staple on a squirrel, and you’ve got a Park Bench
Notice that in both of these shots she is smiling. While, in the picture at the top of this post, she is making that ‘okay okay, I’ll let you take a picture if you hurry up about it and get the heck out of here’ face. (Did you notice her eyes? I swear that’s not red-eye; that’s the Spirit peeking out.) Continue reading