I have suspected this for a little while now, but I believe my suspicions were confirmed as of late. Sometimes I find myself doing things as a parent that SEEM like a perfectly normal, sensible, logical thing to do.....but then a little time passed and I find myself wondering what the hell I was thinking! How in the world did my judgement go so wrong??
We are coming to the end of a parenting milestone. We aren’t quite there yet...but it’s looming on the horizon and almost feels as though it’s in reach. We are on the final lap of a particular parenting marathon and I am thrilled!
As of this moment, we have only one more Book Week Parade to surviv...I mean enjoy (cough cough).
Carter is now in Year 5 and with Book Week over for the year, there is only next year to go and then we feel the sweet relief of high school. The same high school that hasn’t asked Tony to dress up in almost 2 years now. Forget the risks of an environment involving drinking, swearing, drugs - I’m just excited I don’t have to pretend to be creative anymore.
No, in all honesty, I am very aware my creative abilities are limited and even though my boys have enjoyed dressing up, I just don’t have the goods. That doesn’t mean I haven’t tried every single year though.
Knowing we had only this year and next year for Carter, I gave him free reign with his costume choice. His love of WW2 history has brought with it a love of books about the Holocaust. Carter is very empathetic and really struggles to understand how human beings could do such horrific things to their fellow human beings, but he loves reading about the events to try and make better sense of it all.
Tony recently studied “Hana’s Suitcase” at school and Carter loved seeing all the projects on display. It was at this moment I suggested we read “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” as I remembered Tony enjoying it a few years earlier.
We spent a couple of weeks reading it together and he was captivated. He asked hundreds of questions, but the story being told from the perspective of a child helped him to make sense of it all. Carter finds reading hard so if he is interested in a book, we are thrilled.
As Book Week came close, Carter asked if he could dress up as a character from “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. Seeing as he had loved the story so much, I went with it and set about trying to locate a pair of white and blue striped pyjamas. This is surprisingly hard! If Carter was a 50 year old man I would have found this simple, but they don’t sell plain blue and white pyjamas for children - everything had either cartoon characters, bright patterns, or writing all over them.
After multiple days of searching I managed to find a top that would be perfect (in the women’s section - shhh, don’t tell Carter) of Kmart. They were a size 6-8 in women’s which fit him well. The next obstacle was trying to find matching pants.
As I walked through the shopping centre, I mentally ticked off all the major stores that I thought would supply pyjamas and each one I left empty handed. On a whim, I went into Valley Girl and spotted some linen pants with a blue and white stripe. Yes, they had a ruffley waists band, and yes, the buttons were a dead give away they were women’s pants...but I could definitely work with them.
So, pyjamas sorted we set to work trying to match the cover of the book. Carter was happy with the result and as the Book Week parade rolled around we were ready.
We pulled up to the school in the morning, and as I saw other children arriving in their costumes, I had a sudden “Uh Oh” moment. The theme for Book Week this year was “Reading is my Super Power” and from the numerous Spider-Man, Captain America, and Thor costumes, I realised many families had taken this literally. There was also plenty of Harry Potter appearances and some Mary Poppins costumes, but it made me freeze for a moment when it hit me that perhaps Carter’s costume was a bit of a grey-area type costume.
How had it not even occurred to me until this moment that a concentration camp prisoner costume may not have been the most appropriate for a primary school parade!!!
I knew it was too late to do anything about it and I tried to hide my freak out from Carter as he was so excited to be dressed up as a character from a book he loved so much, but I knew I was going to be “that” parent today. The one who sent her child to school dressed in a very questionable costume. But, seeing the look on Carter’s face as he got to show off his outfit made all the embarrassment worth it.
Just one more year to go!
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