This Year's Costume Report

I started out the evening doing something I don't usually like to do: trying to get people to come with me.  Maybe it's just the people I have befriended, but it seems like over the last three or four years I'm always trying to go out and do something fun and whoever is just wanting to be a homebody.  Which would be fine, if I wasn't a young woman and could just go out on my own whenever I wanted. 
This time, it was Jackie and Camilla who didn't want to come out.  Even though it's Halloween, Jackie was basically not interested in going out.  Camilla said she would come if Jackie would too, so that meant it was just Inga and me. 
Inga and I stopped to get some pizza on the way.  I had a huge dinner of pasta, rice, and peas, so I wasn't hungry in the least.  She ate her pizza while we chatted.  Inga told me all about her Grandma and how sick she was. 
I was bundled up tight, which sort of ruined my witch costume, but it was so cold.  As we walked the streets, people were dressed in all sorts of costumes.  Most of them were typical costumes.  Inga told me that she wasn't use to celebrating Halloween as this big thing.  I wish Halloween was bigger, frankly, but I'm always so busy, I never have time to do something like get a fancy costume or make my own.  (Which is exasperated by the fact I haven't sewn anything in years, so making something might be a disaster the first time I try.)
We were mostly out to see and be seen.  And we totally caught some good costumes.  We saw a little girl as some kind of ghost or goblin.  Her face was painted white with black outlining her mouth and eyes.  She had this cane with a skull on the end of it. 
At one point, a bunch of actual firefighters came by and I said "Wow, look at those firefighter costumes!  They look totally real."  An older man standing nearby laughed. 
Also saw an Uncle Fester, who I got a great picture of.  The light hit his eyes just right so that they looked like they were glowing.  Later on in the night I saw a Wednesday. 
One of the costumes I saw three of was a Barbie in a Box.  Really clever, which I like, but I wasn't expecting this to be the popular costume of the night.  (I was going to guess Lady Gaga, who I didn't see once.)  One of the other popular costumes was Michael Jackson, which I was expecting after he passed away last year, but I didn't think he would be popular this year as well. 
I did spot one guy that I think was trying to pull off steampunk (he had the goggles) but he was wearing really bright clothing, so it was hard to tell if this was what he was really going for.
I was surprised by how normal most people's costumes were.  Some years people do really different, weird, esoteric stuff.  This time almost everything was some kind of person and there were few abstract or object costumes, though I did spot a Rubik cube, the only one I've ever seen.  Someone else was what I think was suppose to be a hand, which gave me the idea of someone dressing up as the Michigan Hand, maybe with major cities indicated, the way Michiganders always do.  Probably people didn't want to do weird costumes because it's hard to explain.  I saw one man covered in spoons, for example, and I still don't get what that was meant to be. 
Most importantly, I caught an entire group of boys dressed as Greco-Roman soldiers.  If I had to guess, I would say they were probably Spartans!  I wanted to scream at them "Tonight we dine IN HELL!"
After a while Inga wanted to go.  My fingers were getting stiff from the cold, so we started walking home.  We spotted a woman dressed as a cat who had climbed up the side of a building.
Then, right as we were a block away, I noticed my phone, Sir Chip Flip with the Roam Roam, was gone.  I didn't panic as much as I thought I was going to, but I told Inga we had to go back.  Yeah, it's a really old phone, but losing something like that is such a hassle to replace.  So we walked back.  By which I ran for it. 
I went back to the spot where I was and started looking on the ground.  There were so many people milling about that I couldn't see anything.  As soon as Inga caught up to me, I was going to ask her to call my phone, opening it had fallen a way that would make it light up. 
A man approached me.  "Are you looking for something?" he asked. 
"Yeah, my cell phone."  Without even my asking for him to call, he asked for my phone number. 
Just as it stopped ringing, I spotted it two people to my left, right behind someone's shoe.  I snaked my arm through legs, hoping no one would get offended by my pushiness, and grabbed onto a small black thing.  It was Chip Flip.  Someone had just tried to call. 
"Thank you so much!" I told the man.  I hugged him.  He was really surprised.  Inga showed up and told me to get a hold of myself and we walked home.    
If I had lost my phone, I would have died.  My parents would have never let me forget it, which is deeply annoying, because my Mom's lost her phone six times in the past three years and I've never lost a cell phone once.  (At least not in the permanent sense.) 
While we were walking, some teenagers were fooling around, and Inga and I went around them.  "Dude," one of the guys said to the one girl, "You better move, or that girl is going to fuck you up," in reference to me.  
I turned back to look at them.  "I like you wicked socks," the guy said to me, in reference to my witch's tights. 
"You should hear my wicked cackle," I said. 
As Inga and I moved through the crowd, I heard him shout after me "Let's hear your wicked cackle!"
We finally made it home and went back up to see Jackie and Camilla, who were exactly where I left them.  (Jackie, I suspect, didn't even move herself.)  I got to meet their new roommate, who's name I didn't catch.