Chris was a preschooler, only four or five, when he decided to be a ghost for Halloween. Good mother that I am, I sewed a real costume. No simple sheet for my child.<\/p>\n
I fashioned a white tunic for him that slipped over his head, elastic around the neckline, and long sleeves, with a separate hood that went to his shoulders and had holes cut for eyes and mouth. Pretty scary looking!<\/p>\n
On Halloween night, after putting on his costume, Chris decided it billowed too much. He didn’t want the fabric getting in the way while walking through the neighborhood trick-or-treating, so he tied a short rope around his waist and set out, looking very ghostly, we thought, in the dark.<\/p>\n
One of the homes we visited was that of a teacher from his preschool. She seemed truly surprised and scared when she saw Chris at her door. We were thrilled with our success in costume design.<\/p>\n
Years later, however, when looking at old pictures, we realized that Chris actually looked like a member of the Ku Klux Klan rather than a ghost.<\/p>\n
And the teacher who looked so surprised and scared? Yes, she was black.<\/p>\n
Of course.<\/p>\n
Not a successful costume design after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris was a preschooler, only four or five, when he decided to be a ghost for Halloween. Good mother that I am, I sewed a real costume. No simple sheet for my child. I fashioned a white tunic for him that slipped over his head, elastic around the neckline, and long sleeves, with a separate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}