By: Juztin Bello, Emma Jean, Dhivya Manohar, and Paige Riding

By Juztin

I wasn’t big on creative costumes when I was a kid — evident by the fact I have no photos to submit before the age of 19. Once I got into that age where Halloween was less about trick-or-treatin’ and more about keg stands-or-pongin’, my perspective on Halloween changed. 

Here you can see one of my favourite costumes in which I’m Barnacle Boy from Spongebob Squarepants. The best part about this outfit was the equal levels of nostalgia and comfort; because if I’ve learned anything about going out on Halloween, you want to ride that line of comfortable and cute extremely delicately. I don’t remember much else from this night that I spent as the sidekick to the Champion of the Deep, but that sound of a whole room chanting for Barnacle Boy as I did a keg stand will never be forgotten. To this day, still have no clue where we parked the Invisible Boatmobile.

By Emma

In grade four, my deliberation reached a very 2010 crossroads: do I go as Justin Bieber — whose fashion choices and haircut had an uncanny resemblance to my own — or as a strip of bacon, a costume I found online on our boxy PC? Consultations with classmates, teachers and friendly adults revealed bacon as the unanimous answer. After the longest three weeks of my life, the parcel finally came and I paired it with my best bacon-flavoured lip balm. I wore it trick-or-treating and to a family friend’s party where I struck this Burt Reynolds-like pose beside my dad. 

In a twist of irony, the dawning of my self-awareness and worldview would soon have me begging my parents to let me become a vegetarian until they let me permanently convert. As far as costumes go, this one smoked the competition.

By Dhiv

This was a very abrupt decision from Halloween 2011. I thought I wasn’t going to celebrate Halloween anymore, but all my friends were still going to dress up, so I gave in to peer pressure. The night before Halloween, I pulled out a white jacket, black and white t-shirt, black yoga pants, and socks and made this. It was impulsive but hands-down the best costume I ever had.

By Paige

This is me at the ripe old age of two, when the only problems I had were “will mom place me in front of the TV when Elmo is on” and “wait the human brain can’t recall memories from before the age of three did I even exist back then?” Y2K may have warned about the end of the world, but at least I could pay homage to my world, Elmo, before the end. Not much else to say but “when did I change from an innocent little Elmo on the kitchen floor to a depressed blue-haired socialist?”