Born to be a Butterfly

The year was 1984, astronauts had the first space walk under their belts, Vanessa Williams had surrendered her Miss America crown, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released their first album, and I was six years old.  I had just started the first grade.  I was easing myself into the shocking realization that I was the only boy in my class who played with My Little Pony toys, when my mom asked me to make the most important decision of my life, “What do you want to be for Halloween?” 

After a few seconds of deliberation, I said, “I want to be a butterfly!”

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My cousin, Nita, heard me and said, “Me, too.”  And as Nita was both older and a girl, I knew my choice was the coolest choice I could have made. 

My mom, who was crafty to a point, looked like a deer in the headlights for a moment.  You see, in 1984, asking a kid what he wanted to be for Halloween meant they picked a plastic panted bag of a costume with a tie in the back that had a logo of some cartoon character or TV star, which came with a mask I am fairly certain was made from some sort of poisonous material.  This presumably toxic mask had an elastic band that ripped out your hair and cut off circulation to your brain.  The insides of these masks always became wet with breathing, but all the kids had them.  I had been a Care Bear the year before.  Why I came up with a butterfly is beyond me, maybe I was starting to feel that anything was possible now that I was in the first grade, big boy school. 

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Now, for those of you who were born ten years after me, you won’t understand why my mom was so concerned.  You see, this was well before butterfly wings were manufactured.  We live in a golden age of costume shops now, but back in the day no one had ever imagined that a wire hanger and nylons could be used to make wings, let alone for a one-time use for a six year old boy. 

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My Aunt Sis, Nita’s mom, owned and operated ninety percent of the small Idaho town we lived in.  And when I say town, I mean it consisted of a closed down elementary school, a day care, and my Aunt’s gas station-slash-convenient store-slash-arcade-slash-video rental-slash-bar.  Needless to say, everything from beef jerky to He-Man videos were shipped to Aunt Sis in a cardboard box.  Mom and Aunt Sis got to work.  Mom drew out a wing design which they traced onto cardboard after measuring Nita and me carefully.  Nita’s wings were proportionately bigger than my wings, but they were both beautiful!  They were spray painted black, with silver edges, and psychedelic spots of color done in as symmetrical a pattern as spray paint will allow. 

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Mom dyed a pair of my long underwear black, which actually turned them a charcoal gray.  She made antennae from a couple of gold pipe cleaners and a piece of black elastic.  Nita and I utilized the shimmery rainbow body and hair spray that came in a big aerosol can, and we were to lash the wings on with some awesome shoe laces spangled with rainbow-colored stars.  My wings were too big to take on the school bus with me, so I had to wear my long underwear under my clothes with a glittery, iridescent face, and go to school sans wings. 

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I waited for Mom and Aunt Sis to come all day.  After lunch, all of the kids were given the time to change into their costumes, and I debated taking off my outer clothing and putting on my antennae, but thought better of it.  A wingless butterfly would be a little too morbid for me, even if it was Halloween and none of the other kids would understand it.  Then we all had to line up, and have a parade, where we all walked through the classrooms to show off our costumes.  I wasn't dressed up, but I had to go in the line.  I was put in the back with my friends who didn't dress up by choice because they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.  They were forced to walk with all the pageantry just like me, and all of us were pretty glum about it, albeit for different reasons. 

After our parade, candy was passed out by our teacher and my Jehovah Witness friends got to sit in their special table away from me so that I was the only one in the main group with regular kid clothes on. 

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Finally Mom and Aunt Sis showed up.  Aunt Sis had had to run a few errands that went long, and Mom apologized.  They strapped my arms to my wings at the wrists and elbows via star-spangled shoe laces, and I fluttered all around my class.  My teacher made a big show of bringing me to the front of the class and taking my picture next to the caterpillars in their cocoons that we were trying to hatch for the sake of first grade science class.  I knew my costume was the best in the whole class.  My wings were so huge, if a gust of wind had hit me just right, I might have flown. 

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I knew I was born to be a butterfly.  And, as we have seen, I was a butterfly so long before it was cool, the wings weren't even invented yet.