A Memoir on Inflatable Costumes, Family Entertainment, and Absolutely No Dignity
Setting: October 2026 — An afternoon when the sidewalk became a mid-October Halloween parade
The boys’ cousins passed inflatable Halloween costumes on to them this year. Caleb got Garfield. Holden got a dinosaur.
Naturally, before Halloween actually arrived, they needed to try them on.
Holden and I had already made a Dollar Tree run for batteries because the costumes inflate with little battery-powered fans. What I had not fully appreciated was what these things look like before the fans do their jobs.
Out of the bag, Holden’s dinosaur was less “costume” and more enormous pile of orange synthetic fabric with several unexplained openings.
My mom, dad, me, and the boys were all in the living room while my mom attempted to get him inside it.
This did not go smoothly.
There were arms where legs should have been. Legs where nobody seemed entirely certain legs belonged. At one point, they had put the entire thing on backward. The dinosaur also came with clawed feet and matching claw gloves, because apparently getting an eight-year-old into a giant inflatable reptile was not challenging enough.
My mom was getting increasingly frustrated. My dad thought the whole thing was hilarious. She informed him that perhaps it was funny from where he and I were sitting on the other couch, but it was considerably less funny from inside the situation.
She had a point.
From our vantage point, however, it was excellent.
At one point, watching my mom wrestle yards of orange material around Holden, I said it looked like she was helping him into a wedding dress.
A wedding dress with a tail.
Eventually, through a combination of determination, problem-solving, and what I assume was blind luck, Holden was inside. Then somebody switched on the fan.
The dinosaur began to grow.
And grow.
And grow.
Within seconds, Holden had transformed from a child wearing an unreasonable amount of fabric into a massive orange dinosaur standing in my parents’ living room. He immediately started clapping his little dinosaur claws together and singing something that did not appear to be in any language known to the rest of us.
By then, my mom was an expert. Caleb’s Garfield costume went considerably faster. Soon we had one enormous dinosaur and one enormous orange cat occupying most of the living room.
Someone suggested they go outside.
Caleb ran toward the door in full inflatable Garfield form, laughing.
“This is so stupid,” he exclaimed.
He was correct.
It was also apparently exactly what we needed to do.
They headed to the end of the driveway and started walking up and down the sidewalk. Except “walking” is generous. Inflatable costumes do not really allow for normal human movement. The boys sort of waddled. Wobbled. Bounced.
Then they started chasing each other.
There are few things funnier than watching Garfield flee from a giant dinosaur at the speed of someone trapped inside a balloon.
Cars started honking. Then more cars honked. At one point, even a garbage truck joined in. My mom and I stood back in the driveway taking pictures and laughing while the boys continued their deeply dignified neighborhood performance.
“I hope nobody I know drives by,” I said.
Which, of course, was ridiculous, because by that point they had already attracted the attention of approximately everyone traveling down the road. There was Caleb, enormous Garfield head bobbing as he ran, and Holden, a giant orange dinosaur wobbling after him.
Caleb was right.
It was so stupid.
But for a few minutes, all five of us were laughing, the boys were still young enough to run down the sidewalk in inflatable costumes, and nobody cared how ridiculous it looked.
Because for one ridiculous afternoon, childhood looked exactly like this.
This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.
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