They include a costumed scavenger hunt, a baking competition, a pumpkin carving competition, and a staff costume contest. It's the latter which took place today. Students were to encourage their third hour teachers to participate. Teachers and staff who chose to dress in costume (either alone or in groups) were placed in a bracketed voting competition. The students will be voting through the brackets these next two days.
I pulled the old Renaissance outfit out of storage and put it on again after about six years. Interestingly, it fits better now than it had before. I will say, I looked pretty dashing today.
However, I don't like my chances of winning the competition, as the faculty and staff of SoHi stepped up in a way that has been thus-far unpresidented during my time here. Themed groups included a fruit salad, hippies, twenty-somethings from the 1920s, the Scooby Gang, the trio from Shrek, Bob Ross and his art, "Stars Bucks" coffees, and something about a jellyfish and a pirate captain (... I've been assured that the last was not meant to be erotically inappropriate no matter what I might think). Meanwhile, solo artists such as myself included a Covid-tester, a Covid exterminator, a pirate, a ghost, Minnie Mouse, an identity thief, a baseball player, a hockey guy, a duck hunter, a tourist fisherman, 2020 (a dumpster fire with a mask), Where's Waldo, a Day of the Dead celebrant, RBG, the Tiger King, and an astronaut in a jetpack (the tallest costume, by far).
The day was cheerful and celebratory. The continual refrain was, "I wish the kids were here." While I agree (and even sang a few verses with that refrain as well), I wonder if we may have stepped up our game as a response to what's going on in our world at the moment. We took the situation that the world has given us and made something great out of it. Hopefully, this helps to lift not only our spirits, but those of our students as well.
To paraphrase a pair of quotes from Firefly: What does that make us?
Big damn heroes.