As I may have mentioned before, my son Clyde wanted to be a cowboy for Halloween last year. Let me emphasize again that he wanted to be a cowboy. It was his choice. It wasn’t because I spent the month of October in such a drunken haze that I barely sobered up long enough on the night of the 31st to realize it was Halloween, tie a bandana around his neck, draw a handle-bar mustache on his face with an eyebrow pencil, and call it good. He wanted to be a cowboy. I feel that it is necessary to make this clear because everyone knows that the cowboy costume is one of those classic last minute Halloween costumes, the kind that are usually put together by drunken (or, if we’re being PC, “forgetful”) parents. Come to think of it, all of the “bandana and eyebrow pencil” themed Halloween costumes belong in this category. The Gypsy–bandana on head, skinny eyebrow pencil mustache on face; the Pirate–again, bandana on head, but this time use the eyebrow pencil to black out one tooth (apparently, the only difference between a gypsy and a pirate is their dental plan); and, of course, the Hobo–bandana on a stick, five o’clock shadow on face.
But, as I mentioned before, inebriation on my part wasn’t the rationale for Clyde’s costume: he really wanted to be a cowboy. And yes, while he may have had the standard issue bandana around his neck and handlebar mustache on his face, he also had the nonstandard issue cowboy boots, cowboy hat, cowboy rope, and, most importantly of all (to Clyde at least), cowboy gun. This despite my suspicion that the percentage of cowboys in the Old West who actually carried “sidearms” is about the same as the percentage of white suburban “gangsta rappers” who actually carry “Glock 9″’s.
However, as far as Clyde was concerned, when it came to “real” cowboy costumes a gun was de rigueur–to be without one would be like dressing up as Lindsay Lohan and forgetting the “Property of Betty Ford Clinic” t-shirt: it just wasn’t done. And so, despite my personal misgivings about the authenticity of “cowboy guns,” I acquiesced, and set out in search of a “real fake cowboy gun.” Three hours later I was ready to admit defeat: who knew that toy “cowboy guns” were so hard to find? Sure, there were plenty of regular toy guns to choose from–water guns, laser guns, disc-shooting guns, nerf-launching guns– but everywhere I looked there was not a single real-looking “cowboy gun” to be found. I was starting to think that unless either Clyde changed his costume to “cowboy from outer space” or I agreed to a three day waiting period, Clyde was out of luck.
Fortunately, before it came to that I finally found him a “real cowboy gun” in the far recesses of the local drugstore: a pearl-handled chrome-plated six-shooter no less, one that not only looked real, but, thanks to the fact that it was also a cap gun, sounded and smelled real as well. The only thing that stopped it from looking completely genuine was a bulbous piece of bright orange plastic on the tip of its barrel; when I suggested to my husband that we could remove this, however–to give it a more realistic look–he patiently explained to me that the reason for the orange tip was so that it wouldn’t look real, and so that Clyde wouldn’t get shot when he pointed it at some patrol car on Halloween night. He then added that getting Clyde a cap gun was possibly the dumbest thing I’d done since the previous Halloween, when I’d bought him a toy sword and then wondered why all of the neighborhood kids kept running out of our yard bleeding.
Some people. This year I think will stay drunk all October.