OH THE COSTUMES YOU'LL WEAR

“Do you want to be a tractor? A chickie? A skeleton?” I ask my son. We (I) like to talk about what the children want to be for Halloween.

I ask the questions, pose some options, and get crickets from the back of the car. He’s looking out the window thoughtfully from his mystery-stained car-seat. Either he’s not listening or he’s about to knock it out of the park.

“Boris Johnson,” he finally says.

*

I remember the moment in college when I looked around the room and thought, wait, hold the phone, maybe these people don’t actually know more than I do. MAYBE THEY’RE MAKING IT UP AS THEY GO ALONG, TOO.

I think it’s basically true, and it’s been something I need to remind myself of often, so that I don’t go off like a needled balloon in my own kitchen & become a sad silicone heap on the tile for no actual reason.

You guessed it— I’ve struggled recently!— this time with feeling like I’m masquerading, because apparently these days if one wants to, oh I dunno, say, be alive, one pretty much has to self-promote. [For anyone who has abstained from social media, self-promo is the new breathing.]

Let us, then, make the best of it she said, and yanked up the jeans that are way too big because she bought them without trying them on.