It Was the Best Halloween Costume…It Was Worst Halloween Costume…

It might not seem so apparent today, but there was a time, when I was younger, when I was often told that I looked a lot like the recently deceased actor, Christopher Reeve. He was probably remembered best for his role in the Superman movies. During the time when these movies were popular, I must've got the comment at least 3-4 times a week, "Hey did anyone ever tell you that you look like Christopher Reeve?" It did get very old. I didn't mind so much being compared to the actor Reeve as much as hearing that I looked like Clark Kent. Rarely did anyone actually say I looked like Superman…it was always Clark Kent.

So during the height of my celebrity doppelganger period, I decided it appropriate to dress for a huge Halloween party as the mild-mannered Clark Kent. Most people thought this was a lame costume attempt, as I only had to wear a cheap grey suit and horn-rimmed glasses to pull it off. Many of my friends at this party thought it was a cheap and lazy cop-out. What many people at the party didn't know was that I actually went through great pains, the week prior, to create a Superman costume that I wore underneath the suit and tie. My plan was to transform into the super hero at a later point in the evening when many at this party would be quite drunk/stoned. The costume was easy enough to make. All I needed was a powder blue leotard, tights, an iron on appliqué of the superman emblem for my chest, a pair of red shorts and socks, and a piece of red material for a cape. It all went beautifully… at least for a while. In fact, it went so well that many people didn't realize that I was the same person later transformed.

As the evening wore on, I realized there was a big problem. I hadn't thought about the fact that I would be drinking several pitchers of beer during the party. This costume was not designed for frequent bathroom visits. Imagine for a moment the contortions one must go through to quickly extricate one's manhood from a pair of shorts, a leotard and tights?! It was a nightmare! It seems to me that I ended up cutting an access port through the nylon at some point later in the night. It was a great costume; it was just very bad in function. Still, I think my friend, Frank, had it worse that night. I recall that he went to the party dressed as Robin Hood, but all night people mistook him for Peter Pan.