I think it was roughly three months ago that Isaac began talking about and planning his McGregor costume for Halloween. Long before anyone else was thinking about it, he was practicing. He loved chasing his victim (usually me) throughout the house, yelling “Stop Thief!” And “Wee beasty! Wee pest! Wee varmint!”
So gradually over the last month or so I began putting the costume together. I scrutinized the faded watercolors of Beatrix Potter’s books. I even looked at different editions to see if I could pull out any more details. I noticed the McGregor appears in several stories other than just Peter Rabbit. In “The Flopsy Bunnies” for instance, he’s wearing a jacket.
But my goal was to basically capture the Mr. McGregor of Peter Rabbit, the one who Isaac first encountered in very good British animated version. This McGregor terrified Isaac and yet attracted him so strongly that he would beg to watch it and then watch it while standing safely in the other room, peering around the corner.
I started out with the basics: a blue button down shirt, khaki pants, plain brown shoes, and a vest. I wasn’t sure where I would a size 3T tweed vest, and pictured myself cutting up a second-hand shirt, but I found one on my first try, at a local consignment shop. As it turned out, there were several vests there, including one complete size 3T pin-striped three-piece suit! The vest was brown and tweedy and came with a lame synthetic shirt. $3 for the set. Then Ben brought home a long white beard from a novelty shop. Perfect. I was trying to picture how I would make it out of batting and a piece of flannel, but just buying one was much easier. I found a pair wire-rimmed kids’ glasses at Target, a tweedy hat at the Gap.
Unfortunately, the beard scared him. I mean, really scared him. Ben put it on to show that it was not harmful, but he made the mistake of roaring while he wore it and then Isaac ran away in fright. He wouldn’t even touch the tiniest edge of it and shied from it where it sat on the table.
This worried me, but I turned my attention to the piece de la resistance: the rake.
The rake held a special place in Isaac’s mind when he thought of this costume. “And I’ll have a RAKE!” he would daydream aloud. We were at a toy store a couple weeks ago and there was a bucket full of kid sized rakes by Brio. There were two choices: one of those softer rakes with the long plastic tines for sweeping leaves off grass, and the short, blunt right angle kind-with metal tines. Of course he scorned the softer kind and went right for the deadly one. He began running around the toy store wielding it with great enthusiasm-and making me incredibly nervous that someone would lose an eye.
I didn’t buy it that day, which was not easy.
But I thought about it– It WAS the one most like the rake McGregor had, and yet, would he kill someone with it? Was that really practical? A week or two went by and we were in another toy store, and there it was again. I brought out a small plastic hand rake, thinking hopelessly that maybe he would go for it. No-no way. He looked up from his train set and said simply, “That’s not a rake. That’s a toy.” He was right. I decided to get him a proper rake, one that he could use later to actually RAKE with outside.
But soon I regretted this decision.
Later that day, the UPS man came. Isaac greeted him at the door, shaking his rake at him and hissing through clenched teeth, “Wee PEST! Wee PEST!” Amazingly enough, the UPS man was not anywhere near as charmed by this performance as I was. Even when I explained, “He’s practicing for Halloween,” the UPS man did not smile.
The next day Isaac threw the rake at me, sending it sailing through the air across the room, where it nearly bludgeoned me on the head. I reflexively protected myself with my arms and the rake went clattering against the wall. You see, McGregor really does throw his rake! And so Isaac reasoned that to be true to the role, he would also have to throw HIS rake. But I don’t think he meant to throw it really quite that hard. It was one of those moments where method acting meets limited dexterity with disastrous results. I took the rake away and put it high up in a closet, and Isaac howled on and on at the injustice of that. “My RAAAAAAAKE!” he screamed. “I need my rake!”
I let him scream. He needed to learn that throwing the rake was 100% out of the question, and that if he was going to get the rake ever again he had to demonstrate that he had the maturity to handle it.
Several hours later we were at the Science Center and Isaac really really REALLY wanted this sort of 6-foot-tall Styrofoam rocket that would really go 150 feet in the air. I mean, REALLY wanted it. But then just as he was about to fling himself on the ground in a tantrum, he stopped himself. I saw him STOP. He put the thing back in its holder and walked away. “I’m ready to go now,” he announced. When we were going down the escalator he looked up at me and said, “I can have my rake back because I was SO GOOD!”
I had to admit– he was really good, and it was the sort of goodness and self discipline that is the hardest kind for him to master. I decided that several hours rake free was long enough for him to get the message, and that keeping it away forever, no matter how good he was, would be unjust. I mean, is there no redemption?
So we got home and I gave it back to him and yes, since then he has never thrown it again. He still has a way of running with it in a threatening manner, but he understands, I think, what will happen if he loses control of himself– or of it.
Anyway, on to Halloween. I got him dressed in his shirt, pants, shoes, and vest. Then what happened was perhaps that a recent trip to Boston, Oct 26-29, caught up with him suddenly on the 31st. After a thoroughly normal and even low-key day, he suddenly conked out on the couch about 15 minutes before the festivities were to begin. Humph. So I let him sleep for a half hour or so, but then guests were arriving (we ended up having an impromptu Halloween party), and the trick-or-treaters were coming on fast. So I decided to try to wake him up, lubricating the process with candy as needed. He screamed. He was miserable. He refused to go anywhere near his costume. He removed his vest and shoes and wanted also to remove his shirt and pants, so thoroughly did he reject the whole concept of being Mr. McGregor. He was a complete pill for an hour or so and then finally settled in to the party. He let kids play with his new train set!! Which for him, was an act of boundless generosity. He tried on a little girl’s fairy wings even– and they did look quite nice.
So, in the end, we had a McGregor-free Halloween after all. Oh well. More items to throw into his costume box. And at least he still has his rake, which he’s outside passionately raking with as we speak.