This year's Halloween was extremely eventful. The day started off with Isla being able to participate in her preschool's party even though it wasn't her day to be at school. I made Tegan get her costume picked out and ready the night before, as I was witness to her meltdown last year trying to choose a costume for the day, and wanted to avoid all of that. She decided on a "fairy cowgirl" costume. That's fine, even though I had worked really hard to put together a rad Hermione Granger costume (by working hard, I mean pressing buttons on Amazon and Etsy, don't judge me). So, when morning came, I thought we were good to go. Yeah. Right. The cowgirl fairy costume was too "blue." The princess costumes in her dress up box were too "itchy." The Hermione costume wasn't pretty enough. The Witch costume had too poofy a skirt. About this time, we were already late for school, I had a huge migrane headache and I wanted to punt my sweet little daughter over the fence. Finally, I pulled out a doctors' jacket Tegan had bought for her at her old job and convinced her how cool it would be to go as a doctor.
Not only was it cool, it was a totally empowering costume. Sweet. We hopped in the car and headed to school. As we approached, Isla could see all the little kids milling around, and 9 out of every 10 girls were princesses. I could see her physically sink deeper and deeper into her carseat, and I knew that this was going to be tough. She did get out, however, and hiding behind my leg, made her way to the classroom. As soon as we got inside the gate, a little girl yelled out "Isla, THAT's what you're wearing? hahahahhahaha!" and then ran away. Shoving aside my desire to shove all of her plastic doctor accoutrements down this little shit's throat, I turned to Isla as tears started to roll down her face and said "That girl will never be able to be a doctor, don't worry." It didn't work. Her wonderfully nice teacher attempted to give her a princess costume that is in their dress up area, but it was again, "Too itchy" so Isla just sulked in the corner. Luckily, a sweet little boy named Finn saved the day when he shared his line leader duties with Isla, bringing her back into the fold.
Like my wife told her when she got home, 20 years from now Isla, you'll look back on that decision to be a doctor in preschool with pride, and that little girl who yelled at you will probably be wearing sweatpants and 11 AM, eating tootsie rolls while she surfs the internet and throws the wrappers into her kids crib. Forget her.
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