Your Halloween Costume Disasters

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WYNC. As you get ready for Halloween, we'll do a cautionary call-in now on your failed Halloween costumes from the past. We're going to share some examples from WNYC folks, then hear yours. Who had a Halloween costume epic fail that you want to tell the story of? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If you're really into the holiday, finding the perfect costume can feel like a lot of pressure, and it can take a lot of work and planning. Sometimes, despite that effort, those costumes go horribly wrong.

Now that's the premise of this segment, which came to us from WNYC's planning editor, Kate Hinds, and she's going to tell us her story. Hi, Kate.

Kate Hinds: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: What happened?

Kate Hinds: Years ago, my elementary school daughter, Sophie, wanted to be a peacock for Halloween. I'm thinking it through, I'm not the craftiest person in the world, but I was like, "I can pull this together." I bought some peacock feathers at Michael's along with a glue gun, and, of course, because I live and die by last-minute stuff, I wait until the actual day of Halloween to pull this together. I'm gamely gluing peacock feathers to a piece of cardboard, and my plan is to tie it around her waist.

What I hadn't factored in was, A, I'm going to burn myself repeatedly with the glue gun, and B, I had two cats who were extremely interested in the active peacock feathers, being waved around in my living room. I'm trying to keep them away from my cardboard tail, but I get it all together. I come up with what I think is a really beautiful plume of spread-out 180-degree peacock feathers. I put it on Sophie, who is wearing a blue bodysuit, blue tight, and I think she looks great. Now, it's time to go downstairs to go trick or treating. I realized I hadn't factored in the exit strategy.

I have to get her through my apartment door. She walks through the door and immediately bangs off some peacock feathers. I'm like hastily trying to get it back together. Then we can't get her in the elevator because, of course, I can't retract the peacock feathers. The whole evening of trick-or-treating was me spent following her around, like some elaborate attendant at a wedding with a bridal train, trying to make sure that her feathers didn't fall off, and she wasn't banging into things.

Brian Lehrer: What did you dress her as the following year, a pigeon?

Kate Hinds: Probably no. Maybe it was something like, "Here's a sheet, be a ghost. I can't handle this."

Brian Lehrer: Great story, Kate. How does your daughter remember that? Do you ever talk about it?

Kate Hinds: We do talk about it. She laughs about it. They laugh about the idea that I at one time attempted to be crafty with my kid's costumes because I'm really just not. For them, as I'm sure for most kids, the fun of the day was in roaming around our building and our neighborhood getting candy, which, of course, is the big payoff for me as a parent.

Brian Lehrer: All right, Kate, thanks for the idea for this call-in, and thanks for setting us up with your own epic fail from Halloween's past.

Kate Hinds: [laughs] Happy to be the Guinea Pig.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, do you have a Halloween costume disaster story? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Did you work really, really hard on a costume, like Kate did, only to have it not fit through the door or turn on you at the last and in some other way? One of my producers says her mom made her a robot costume out of silver house insulation, you know that stuff? She got so white-hot when she was trick-or-treating that she fainted. Did you think you were dressing up as one thing, and then once you got to the party, people thought you were a totally different thing?

Were you the only one to wear a costume to a Halloween party period and then you felt really weird and awkward? Call in with your Halloween costume disaster stories. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. Kate, because she has so much experience in this field, is going to ride along and help take your phone call. Let's see, who's ready. Jackie, in the East Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jackie?

Jackie: Hi Brian. One year, I was a cloud and it sort of looked like a combination of a cloud and Marie Antoinette. It was a dress I had got from a thrift store, and I was making it look fantastic-- was that I had spray glued cotton wool over the majority of the dress. I had these long silver gloves, and they had cotton wool on them. I had a powdered face, wear the Marie Antoinette wig. It was one of those Halloween where the actual parade fell at the end of all the outdoor time, so I had worn it for three or four days, and everything was fantastic.

My friend that I was with at the time said, "We've really got to go to the parade," and I had never done the parade. Oh, I was wearing a six-inch clear known as stripper heels on my feet, so I was very tall. I had a functioning plastic plane secured to my shoulder that led up. The parade went really well. I was exhausted by the end of it, couldn't really walk. We made it to Union Square, got to the coffee shop, and people along the way had said, "You better make sure that you don't stand next to an open flame," and I thought, "I can handle this. I've got this. I know how to do this."

I got into the coffee shop, and sure enough, along the bar, there were candles. I pushed the candles out of my way, sat down. In the time that I turned around to look to see where my friend was, oh, the place was packed. I looked back. I'm talking like a second. When I looked back, my hand from my fingertips caught flame. It spread up the back to my shoulder in less than a second, and I stood up. Everyone stood back. Now, I was in the middle of a room on fire. In my head, I was thinking, "Drop and roll, drop and roll." That's all I could think about, it was how to put it out.

I surfaced the floor with my body thinking, "This is going to work. I'm going to get through this. This is okay." As I hit the floor and went to roll, the plastic plane was preventing my body from putting out the flame. At that second, I looked down at my foot and my whole body was on fire, and I just lost it. I started screaming. I screamed so hard because everyone was staring out at me, they didn't know what to do, that I shook my wig off. Thank God, otherwise, I would have gotten face burns.

When I started screaming, that prompted people to act, and so people started throwing water on me, of course, which didn't work. Then at the end of it, the security guard had managed to make his way through the crowd and he threw his coat over me, and that extinguished the flame. I remember looking up at him and he said to me, "It's okay. It's it's over." Because he could tell I was in complete and out of shock.

Brian Lehrer: Were you seriously hurt?

Jackie: I got out onto the sidewalk and one of the fathers that was sitting in the booth next to me, came out. He followed me out and he said, "I just have to tell you, I'm a father and I'm so glad that you started screaming because I was literally in shock. When I heard you screaming, everybody came out, and moving mentality and they said, 'oh this is real, we got to do something about this.'" I couldn't go to the emergency room because I was so catatonically stressed out from the whole thing, that the next morning I woke up and I went to the doctor, and I had third-degree burns along my shoulder.

"Thank God," he said, "You are so lucky that that's the only part of your body that was seriously injured."

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Jackie: Then the other thing, this is my cautionary note to all mothers out there because I did not know before this event, he said, "You would be surprised how many children come through our practice and through the emergency rooms every year because no one knows that these costumes are handmade at home. A lot of times, the sprayed glues are highly flammable, and there are open candles everywhere. That's my story.

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Well, that's some story, Jackie. Thank you very much. Wow, Kate, that's worse than anything I thought we were possibly going to get in this lighthearted epic Halloween costume fail segment. Not to mention that it took up a lot of our time, but how much can you interrupt somebody when they're talking about being on fire?

Kate Hinds: That was an incredible story. At first, I was thinking, "What great high production values Jackie had," and then when the flammability was mentioned, I was like, "There's about to be a twist here, and it's not going to be good."

Brian Lehrer: The cautionary tale, less that not get lost at the end there, that some of those materials are highly flammable, so be aware. All right. What this means is we're going to have to keep the rest of our callers short. Erica in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Give us your 30-seconds epic fail Halloween costume story if you can.

Erica: I actually thought of a second one related to the fire, but with it was a happier ending. I will tell the first one, which was when I was probably 8, 10. I was at Hershey's candy bar. My mom painted the box in excruciating level of beautiful detail, everything that's on the front and importantly on the back of a Hershey's candy bar. Sadly, we don't have any pictures of it because, back in the day, you didn't take pictures of everything. The box came down below my knees so that I couldn't bend my legs, which, when going downhills in our neighborhood, proved to almost tip me over.

Brian Lehrer: Erica almost fell over because of the Hershey box below her knees. Jeff in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jeff.

Jeff: Hi, Brian. This is about a time when I wished I could have burst into flames. I went to a Halloween party at Webster Hall. A friend of mine had helped me wrap up like a mummy with these bandages. As soon as I started dancing at Webster Hall, very, very soon afterward, I started to unravel completely. Two of my friends got me into a taxi. By which point, I was down to a pair of tighty whities, some socks, and a whole lot of loose bandages in my hands. That's how I rode home. I was filled with horror, which, I guess, was seasonally appropriate.

Brian Lehrer: Don't use the self-adhesive mummy tape. Use the real stuff and secure yourself. Thank you. Stacy in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stacy.

Stacy: Hi, I love your show. That last one got me laughing. My story is that I went as a one of the Fruit of the Loom fruits. I had made this elaborately grapevine structure. When I went to the New York City Parade, unfortunately, it was during the time when people were smoking more, and I got popped. All my grapes, they did not last. My cautionary tale is if you're using anything inflatable, make sure no one is smoking around you.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. There you go. A more benign ending of costume-caught-on fire story, Kate. I think we have a theme here, but let's call it.

Kate Hinds: Bring a fire extinguisher.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Kate on Long Island in Oyster Bay. Hi, Kate, you're on WNYC. We've got 30 seconds for you.

Kate: Well, to be quick, it was actually not me but my ex-husband. We were going to a party at a friend's house, and he decided to be a scarecrow. He took all these straws from the bale of hay we had and stuffed it in all over his clothes sticking out. It looked great. However, he was shedding the whole time at my friend's house, and she said, for weeks afterward, she would find straw in strange places like in a closet and so forth. Looked great, but she wasn't too happy.

Brian Lehrer: Looked great. Made a mess. All right Kate Hinds, see what you started.

Kate Hinds: I thrilled that people called in. I love all of these stories, minus the burn one.

Brian Lehrer: You go in as anything this year?

Kate Hinds: I'm not. I was invited to a Versailles-themed party, but it's too intimidating for me, so I'm going to stay home and answer the door for trick or treaters.

Brian Lehrer: More scintillating Halloween coverage tomorrow on the Brian Lehrer Show, we promise. Kate Hinds, our planning editor. Thanks a lot.

Kate Hinds: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer and WNYC.

 

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