I have always loved Halloween. When I was a kid I would literally start planning my costume on November first. I'd spend weeks working on it. How to pick only one? One year I was a Bic lighter. I made a flame out of colored tulle. An odd choice in retrospect, but I was never a particularly cool child.

My husband is also a huge Halloween buff. Every year since we've met we've come up with costumes to share together; Homer and Marge, Drew and Mimi, Fozzy and Miss Piggy, mermaid and pirate. You get the idea. We're into it. Far more into it than normal adults should be and I freely admit that. Each costume is lovingly if quickly designed and implemented and they usually come out great.

So, it came as a huge shock to us when Eric insisted that he did NOT want to wear a costume on Halloween. I overheard him confide to his little friend Maya that he didn't like costumes.

"Why not?" She asked.

"Because they make me into something scary." He told her.

"You could be a cloud." She suggested. "That's not scary."

But he held his ground in spite of multiple suggestions for non-scary costumes that included, Crayon, box of raisins and baby bunny.

My son has decreed that he will not wear a costume, even if it means missing out on trick or treating. Of course we'll let him trick or treat. We took him trick or treating at his dad's office last week and he deigned to wear a small printed card that said "Boy who does NOT like costumes." But eventually he cottoned on to the fact that the sign made his streetclothes into a costume and he didn't want it any more.

Sigh... This parenting gig isn't at all what I expected sometimes.