Well, people, here we are once again: Just a few more days till Halloween, and you haven’t even begun to plan a costume.
Instead of making your annual excuses at the party as you stress-eat an entire bowl of stale Tootsie Rolls, consider showing up in one of these easily assembled guises, any of which are sure to scare the pants off your friends:
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Pin socks, small pieces of fabric, or other laundry items to your clothing. Mess up your hair to look like it’s statically charged. You’re static cling.
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Wear a cardboard Amazon box with the word “PRIME” written in big letters.
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Hang a dry erase board around your neck. Write on it the total you owe in student loans. Develop a formula to calculate the interest and periodically increase the total throughout the evening.
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Wear an iPad that displays video of yourself getting left-swiped on Tinder, over and over and over again.
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Attach packets of Smarties candies to your pants. Boom, you’re now Smartie Pants.
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Wear a slip (or an oversized slip-like dress) and jot down some Freudian terms on it with a fabric marker.
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Wear a pig snout or mask and wrap yourself in a blanket and you can be a “pig in a blanket.”
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To be a copy cat, attach a few printed pages or photocopies to your outfit and wear cat ears.
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To be a one night stand, attach a bedside lampshade to your head and carry a nightstand drawer or alarm clock.
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On a poster board, write everything you thought you would have accomplished by this age, but haven’t. Carry it with you all night.
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Keep your phone to your ear. When anyone asks what you’re supposed to be, say you’re on hold waiting for biopsy results.
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Gray your temples. Walk around with a laptop with Excel open, trying to make a VLOOKUP formula work while simultaneously Googling chicken recipes for dinner. Boom: You’re yourself in 10 years.
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Wear the same clothes you wear every day, but try to maintain an vaguely unsettled facial expression—someone you love has cancer and there’s nothing you can do.
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Wear all beige and say you’re gluten.
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Tell everyone you just joined an improv troupe and they’re invited to your first show.
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Keep pulling an unwrapped pregnancy test out of your pocket. Ask everyone if they see two lines or what.
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Go as a six-hour-old Instagram photo with zero likes.
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Drag around a trash can with your resume in it.
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Duct tape to your chest the number of hours you spend on Facebook each day.
- Instead of dressing up and going to a party, sit at home, alone with your thoughts.
Don’t forget to coordinate with other guests so that nobody doubles up! And, as always, have a great time pretending this holiday isn’t for children.
Photo via Steven Leonti/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Editor’s note: This article is regularly updated for relevance.