#157 He is a Monkey

Weekend I’d Forget

Halloween has never been a major holiday for me.  In fact, growing up, my brothers and I weren't allowed to celebrate it.  Instead, we celebrated the harvest.  As you can imagine, our heads hung low every November 1st when our friends came to school parading their treasures from the night before.*

As is typical for youngest sibling behavior, Jonathan rebelled and rejected the No-Halloween-Policy.  It started with innocent photos taken in places like Wal-Mart with their skeleton displays.  It led to any spooky-vampire-ghoulish-bloody merchandise Jonathan could manage to get his hands on prominently placed in all corners of the living room during the months of September and October.

At least a month before Halloween this year, Jonathan found a sumo wrestler costume in Target.  It boasted a battery operated fan and that it was one-size fits all which made me instantly believe it would be a complete waste of his remaining $25 birthday gift card.

Yet, buy it we did.  He planned to wear it to his church Harvest festival the day before Halloween and in the days that preceded it my mother and I tried to get him to try it on, fearing it wouldn't fit and we would be stuck with a confused and stubborn Jonathan.

He refused to try it on until the day of the festival, and thank God, it fit.

I think it was the best costume he has ever bought.  People cleared the way for him to walk by.  People he knew belly bumped him.  Strangers asked to take pictures with him.

Ordinarily I don't give out candy in my town.  Since I wasn't raised on Halloween, buying candy for kids I hardly know has never really appealed to me.  However, Jonathan had convinced me to buy him a second Halloween costume.  In exchange, I told him he would come over on Halloween and give out candy.  

As a monkey.

It was quite the realistic mask, I felt like I was hanging out with a cast member from Planet of the Apes.  We found it at Party City when my brother, Joel, put it on to be silly.  Unlike most masks, the mouth moves with it.  Immediately, my husband and Jonathan both wanted one.

At $50 each.

Altogether that's the price of four sumo costumes, people.

I'll admit, it was fun to be a monkey for a few hours, hence why it made it to the prominent place of my favorite part of the weekend.  The most interesting thing I found was the way people treated Jonathan when he wore the mask.  

With the mask on, Down syndrome was not the most prominent thing about him.  With the mask on, people came to the door, laughed or hesitated at his mask, took their candy, and were on their way.  The few times he had the mask off I heard sweet voices saying hello, teenagers calling him 'buddy' and asking gently how many pieces of candy they could take from the bowl he was pushing towards them.

Though I loved the mask on him, I think I like life better with it off.