Howl-O-Ween
In the Nagasawa household, Christmas is by far our favorite holiday of the year. But if there’s a second place, I think I’d have to say it’s Halloween. It was a yearly event that focused on our kids in a really fun way with the trick-or-treating for candy, carving of pumpkins and, of course, coming up with great costumes.
Up until they reached a certain age, my wife would make their costumes by hand. She was incredibly creative and sewed costumes that would always blow me away. Of course, making the costume that held up to her standards was probably the scariest thing about Halloween, as many times she would spend days sewing only to tear them up and start over again.
I’d have to explain to the kids, “Mommy’s OK, she just wants it to be perfect for you.” Good thing she wasn’t as particular in choosing a husband, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this column.
Anyway, now that our kids have pretty much outgrown the whole costume thing, my wife needed to focus on a new but similar project. She decided that she would make a Halloween costume for our dog Buddy.
OK, I’m willing to tolerate a great many things, but putting clothes on a dog is not one of them. I realize that’s big business for pet stores, but I cringe whenever I see someone trying to make a dog look human. It’s undignified in my mind, but my wife and daughter think it’s cute.
In the days leading up to Halloween, I would be in a heated battle with these girls, saying I would not allow them to dress up Buddy in a costume. I think this stems from when we first got him. My wife and daughter got talked into buying him a really frilly collar – it was made with Swarovski crystals or something like that.
It made him look like a female dog, until I went out and bought him a black collar with skulls and crossbones on it. Until this day, I have deflected attempts to put hats, bow ties and booties on him. I will say that they put up a good fight until they realized I was not going to budge, and so they let it go.
They’ll never believe this, but when they left the room after I won that battle, Buddy gave me a high-five.
