I love the phrase “Do you worst,” especially when coupled with the pronoun, “Sir,” quite possibly because whenever I say it aloud or read it to myself in my head it’s always highly exaggerated and British-sounding. Or quite possibly drunk-sounding. Or: all three!
Awhile back I used it for the title of this post, wherein I was posting about the 5 Worst Ways To Die, Cinematically-Speaking, and today I thought a modified version of the same title would do splendidly for the question I’m about to ask all of you.
(Remember I’m asking it in my best exaggerated drunk British intonation, which makes it more charming, OK?)
Once upon an October Bethany sparked a trip down my personal Halloween memory lane, my pillow-case full of candy in tow, after she requested stories about a particularly awesome/silly/memorable Halloween costume of yore on a giveaway post.
Instantly I remembered that one year, when I was in 8th grade I think, I went trick-or-treating as a “Dead Farmer.” Not just a farmer, mind-you, though I did indeed rock some blue and white vertical striped overalls and a straw hat, but a DEAD Farmer, with much emphasis and fake blood on the “DEAD” part. I even carried a plastic hoe covered in fake blood around with me all night long. Because apparently I had an farming accident and thus: dead farmer. (My costume unwittingly doubled as a PSA about the importance of safety around hand-held farm equipment! How very farm progressive of me!)
Needless to say it was the best of all my most ridiculous costumes, and the truly tragic part is I don’t think I have any pictures of my costume that year. Which could, of course, very well be a blessing in disguise, but part of me will always mourn for the laughter that photo would have created. Laughter no doubt directed AT me, which could then have been added to the laughing I am already doing at myself.
The only perk of the entire ensemble was that it was a WARM costume, and in the city where I grew up, warm is more than key, it’s mandatory.
(If you want to see some of my more photographed Halloween costumes from yesteryear, I would highly recommend this post. Apparently, I was a big fan of the The Pumpkin face.)
Now it’s your turn! “And no non-participating around these part, neither,” sayeth Dead Farmer Kerri.
I LOVE costumes, and hearing about costumes, and laughing at your costumes, and so here’s the part where I turn the proverbial blog mic over to you, and you tell me the Halloween costume from your past that you love to hate.
Or maybe, you love to love it. But the point is, it’s horrible, or just horribly awesome, and you want to share it with the Internets. (Bonus points for any and all pictures of said horribly/awesome costumes.)
Ready, set, costume (over) share!
OK, OK, so you all want incentives for embarrassing yourself on the internet, right? (I do, too.) So the winner of the best most horribly/awesome costume over share wins some pretty paper courtesy of yours truly. Game ON.
I posted a picture of him for a silly Instagram-related game and found him waiting for me in my dreams, something which occurs so rarely it still explodes solidly-constructed dams inside me each time I see his face, mustached and smiling at mine just the way he always did, just the way I always remember him. As usual he didn’t say much, not anything I could hear or remember, but he was there and I knew it, and when I → Read more...
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...