By Rick Kaempfer
Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays when I was kid. Getting dressed up in a costume, ringing doorbells, getting free candy…what’s not to love?
When my oldest son Tommy got to the trick-or-treating age, I was looking forward to reliving the excitement with him. I figured he was going to love it as much as I did.
He didn’t.
In fact, he couldn’t stand any of it. He particularly hated dressing up in a costume. When he was five, he grudgingly agreed to wear the Woody costume because he loved Toy Story, but only if we promised he could take off the cowboy hat the second after I took the obligatory Halloween picture. We came to the same agreement when he was six, and seven, and eight.
By third grade, when he didn’t fit into the Woody costume anymore, he was ready to quit the Halloween tradition once and for all.
I figured his lack of enthusiasm had to be my fault somehow. My enthusiasm for Halloween must not have been translating properly. Maybe if I tried a little harder to get into that little braniac head of his, tried to think of the kind of costume he would like, maybe that would win him over.
So I told him we would brainstorm ideas.
“Tommy, you don’t have to pick one of these costumes in the store, or try to be like one of the other kids, you know. You can be anything you want to be for Halloween.”
Tommy wasn’t the greatest at brainstorming. “I want to be Tommy,” he said.
“You know what Albert Einstein used to say?”
That piqued his interest. Einstein is his hero.
“He said God’s greatest gift to mankind is imagination, because with imagination, there are no limits to what you can achieve.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Einstein said that?”
“Yes, he did. Now use that imagination of yours, Tommy, and I promise you that we will create a costume for whatever you come up with—no limits. Anything at all.”
“Anything?”
“Yes, anything.”
“OK,” he said, “I want to be an accountant.”
He was the only accountant in the 3rd grade that year. He dressed up in a suit and tie, and carried a calculator. The next year he dressed up as an artist. He wore a smock and a beret (until the second after I took the picture). In 5th grade he was a scientist. He wore a white lab coat.
Now he’s in middle school and the kids don’t have to dress up anymore. When he found that out, he broke into the biggest grin I’d seen on his face in years.
This year he’s finally wearing the costume he wants to wear for the first time.
He’s going as Tommy.
This article first appeared on the blog of "NWI Parent," a publication of the Northwest Indiana Times. I'm now a regular columnist/blogger for them, writing a weekly column called "Father Knows Nothing"
