It's no secret I'm not a big fan of planning ahead of holidays. I tend instead to ignore them until they have crept up and there's no time to prepare anything big. That's true whether it's Halloween or Christmas, anniversaries or birthdays. As far as I'm concerned, most holidays are completely overdone as it is, and they don't need my help to push them to higher levels of grandiose. This year's Halloween is no different. I didn't purchase a costume, I didn't buy candy for potential trick or treaters, and I didn't plan on dressing up for a Halloween event at the office today. Yet somehow, despite a lack of any planning, it all worked out.This morning, while considering what it would be like to ignore the holiday altogether, and be a "Bah Hambug" to the day's events, I started to think how I could use piecemeal items I already owned to make something resembling a costume. I ran through the items I had around, in my head - from PJs, to t-shirts, to ball caps, shorts - anything... and I came up with the idea to go as a software engineer, simply by wearing a company t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops and black socks pulled up to the knees. After all, some of our engineers wear this stuff every day.
In my mind, the "costume" fit the minimum criteria needed to say that I had "dressed up" for Halloween, but obviously the minimum. Nobody could say that I had spent too much money, worn too much makeup or any of that. In fact, I ran a very real risk of people not knowing what the heck I had planned. But surprisingly, more than two-thirds of the people who saw my outfit had me rightly pegged as a company engineer, and some specifically identified a colleague who most resembled my getup.
In the afternoon, we gathered to award prizes and offer colleagues' kids the chance to trick-or-treat from cubicle to cubicle. Gathered in the main conference room, they announced costume winners - from most scary, to most funny, and finally, most original. I looked around at every one else's costumes - from ninjas to ballplayers, vampires, princesses and butchers. But it was my name called as "most original", winning me a $25 Starbucks gift card, which I'll probably exchange to someone else at some point. But the point had been made. With almost zero planning, and no investment, I ended up a winner. Surprisingly, nobody asked for a recount. They got the trick, and I got the treat.
Listening to ''4.Five ft 5-Live Sofia 6-7-05'', by Underworld (Play Count: 11)