My next door neighbor’s son Jason was crestfallen when he got the memo from school about this year’s pc Halloween celebration: no vampires, no zombies, no monsters, no devils; no swords or stakes or axes or ropes or hockey masks with breathing holes. Forget the fake blood or the green slime or the dripping claws or the sticky cobwebs or the black goo or dressing like his horror film namesake. “Positive images only,” said the school memo, with helpful suggestions like “Winnie the Poo, Cinderella, Tinkerbell, or Marley” (presumably before his death scene). To make things worse, no weapons of any kind, even for the heroes. I understand school is supposed to be a safe place, but what’s a nine year old boy to do? 
I volunteered to brainstorm with the boy one afternoon, little suspecting that Jason had already assembled a list of potential figures he could impersonate.
I felt a kind of sickening dread as I scanned the list. My heart pounded against my ribcage as my breath caught in my throat. The sound of blood roared in my ears and for a moment I couldn’t see.
“How did you come up with these names?” I managed to whisper.
“Pretty good, right?” Jason asked slyly.
These are the list of possible Halloween costumes each and every one designed to strike fear into the hearts of most sane…adults.
The Financier Bernie Madoff 
The Balloon Boy
an airline pilot with a laptop 
Mark Sanford or Rod Blagojevich
Sarah Palin as an author or Kate Gosselin as a talk show host
At the end of the day, Jason decided to go as a 401K plan.
Pretty scary.
Well, that gave me my laugh of the day. What about Don Draper from Mad Men? There’s a good role model for every young boy – NOT!
I think you meant 401k. 409 is that spray-on tile cleaner, or a song by the Beach Boys–”Giddyup, giddyup–409!” If I remember correctly, the 409 in that case is a muscle car of the ’60’s.
you caught a typo – since corrected – but your comment deserved airing. I think I probably was thinking in terms of having one’s pension cleaned out when I wrote 409 – yuck, yuck
The scary part is rather than use the ghouls and fake weapons of Halloween as a teaching moment Jason’s school decided to ban them. How does that help the kids? It reinforces a disconnect between school and society at large. School shouldn’t sanitize the world, it should give kids the critical thinking tools to navigate it.
My 8th grade daughter dressed as “the money you could be saving with Geico.” She made a costume to become the googly eyes on top of the stack of bills. Even the little kids, recognized what she was. She embodied the scary power of advertising.
brilliant