Thank you, Captain Jack Sparrow

Pirates. Those swashbucklin', grog drinkin' scallywags are all the rage right now. Men and women have a plethora of cheap piratical costumes to choose from for Halloween, complete with plastic cutlasses and fake parrots. Everywhere you look, thar be pirates. Now don't get me wrong, I've been a fan of pirates for a long time. You might say I was pirate when pirate wasn't cool. My garb for the SCA (historical reenactment, remember) has a distinctly nautical slant. Hence my problem. I could, if I chose, throw on my best piratical get up and go out on Halloween night with our kids. Surely I'd put to shame all those Wal-mart wannabe swabbies with their nylon tights and poorly constructed tri-corn hats. Trust me, folks, I can do pirate with the best of 'em. But... what's the point? I mean, I do that all year 'round. Halloween is for dressing up as something you *aren't*. Right? And even though I'm an adult, I still get a child-like sense of joy in playing pretend. That's probably what started me off doing historical dress up in the first place. But it's gotten to the point where it isn't pretend anymore for me to walk around in my swashbuckler outfits. Being a rapier fighter isn't simply something I do now. It's part of who and what I am. No fun to do that on Halloween, even if I can show up the ignorant, cheeseball, mainstream "look-at-me-I'm-a-pirate" crowd. It's seriously sucked all the fun out of the secular side of the holiday. Maybe we'll just take the kids around (adults in street clothes) and then I'll go home for a quiet, private bit of meditation for Samhain. But my inner child will regret not getting to dress as a zombie, or a devil, or something outlandish that isn't part of my normal activities. Dressing up or not, though, I do reserve the right to point and laugh at the adults that wear the pitiful store-bought pirate get ups. I gotta have some fun, after all.