oh little boy
dressed as a girl
you look like a girl
dressed as a gypsy**
oh little boy who are you
NOTES
This is a description of me one Halloween when I was a kid. It was the 1960s, and I was dressed as a girl. I don’t know why. I didn’t shy from the costume. It was a good costume. It fooled everyone.
I didn’t even place in the costume contest.
When my mom asked why, the judges were shocked. They thought I was a girl dressed as a gypsy! It was too late to rejudge the contest. And it was too late to dispel my distaste for costumes and Halloween.
I’ve dressed up only one other time for Halloween. That was as an adult in the early 1990s. I was going to a costume party. I had planned to wear no costume, but at the last minute I remembered “Crazy Spatula Head” from Adam Sandler’s, so I created that costume from a spatula and clothes hanger I had on hand.
I remember nothing at all about that party.
** I understand the “gypsy” is considered by many to be derogatory, but I could not make the poem work without it. I tried a few different iterations using “Rom” and “girl in a dirndl” (which was not true), and the fact of the matter is that I was told, “We thought you were a girl dressed as a gypsy,” so that’s what I have to go with.