It has been mighty cold lately. Doesn’t matter where you live, the temperatures have dipped. And early, too. There have been reasons given, most of them summed up with the initials c.c. (I will not get into that discussion!) But even over the past four decades, the mercury had done similar nose dives at various inopportune times. We expected after moving from Wyoming to Tennessee that such dips wouldn’t happen. After all, Tennessee has a mild climate. Oh, boy, were we wrong.

We moved to East Tennessee in 1982 for a variety of reasons and not because of the climate. We found a place in Etowah, and set up house. It was approaching Halloween and being the adventurous three year old that he was, our son, Tommy, wanted to go out trick or treating.

We had no money to buy a costume that year, so we had to decide on one we could make with materials we had on hand. A program that we liked at the time was called Greatest American Hero. That was the sci-fi comedy where a high school teacher, Ralph (William Katt), is bequeathed a special suit by visiting aliens. Only problem is he loses the instruction manual and has to figure out the suit’s abilities by trial and error. We all thought it funny that Ralph never could quite get the hang of landings. Anyway, the suit on the show was horrendously red with a fancy symbol on the chest, a silver belt, with a black cape, and red boots.

That is what Tommy decided he wanted to be, with a little coaxing by me. (I am not a good seamstress!) He had red jammies and since that’s what one of the characters called the suit on the show, it was appropriate. I had some black felt and red finishing tape. Cape taken care of. Used markers and construction paper for the symbol. I sprayed a belt with silver paint. He had some slightly oversized red rain boots because the weather is so changeable. Of course, these were footed pajamas so that worked, too.

Then the temperatures spiked. El Niño year, the weathermen all said. Yikes, my poor little three year old was going to roast! Too late to change costumes. Then the day of Halloween approached and the mercury decided to race backwards. (Remember the old adage, if you don’t like the weather….) By October 31st it had turned cold. Most of the kids were wearing coats. Not my son. He was WARM and loving it. Being small for his age, everyone talked about how cute he was. He was too young to be embarrassed. All that mattered was that it got him a little more loot. Anyway, the crazy weather worked in his favor that year.

It did a couple of years later when he decided to be Bobby the Barbarian, too.

Susan Kite is the author of five novels for young adults. You can find them at: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00J91G0ZU/
She is also a member of Author’s Guild of Tennessee.