Halloween Costumes of Local Public Figures Revealed

This column originally appeared in The Sun Chronicle on Friday, October 31, 2014

 

AN INSIDE LOOK

By Bill Gouveia

 

            Today is Halloween, one of the uniquely American holidays that doesn’t get you a day off from work but does encourage you to knock on your neighbor’s front door.  The one night a year when you are expected to dress up in scary or amusing costumes.  A chance to express yourself in an uninhibited and unrestrained manner.

 

            Of course, it is supposed to be about children.  They generally dress up as the things that scare them most – or at least, they did in my day.  We dressed as ghosts, goblins, zombies, monsters, all the things that dominated our nightmares and sent shivers and tremors down our spines.  It was a way of facing and overcoming our deepest fears.

 

            It may be different today, when costumes tend to be superheroes and cartoon characters.  But many of us still believe our choice of Halloween costumes – particularly as adults – says a lot about what we are thinking beneath the surface of our outside personas.

 

            With that in mind, I set out to use the skills of my crack team of trained investigators to discover what some of our local and state officials and/or public figures were going to be for Halloween.  Using methods unknown even to the NSA and CIA, they worked tirelessly to discover what these good folks were planning on being tonight when the sun goes down.  It just might be indicative of what they fear the most.

 

            So without further ado, I give you the results they uncovered.  Here are what some of your favorite public figures will be dressing as this Halloween.

 

            The North Attleboro Board of Selectmen will be going all out tonight.  Some will dress as a modern town charter.  Others will don costumes and go as children denied a place to play in the street.  The remaining members will be disguised as an actual binding ballot question.

 

            The Seekonk School Committee will, as expected, dress as a school employee with actual job security.

 

            Gubernatorial candidates Martha Coakley and Charlie Baker are going out as their collective worst nightmares.  Both will be clothed as Plainville voters asking for a rational explanation of why the candidates support an unbuilt Springfield casino but not the half-constructed Plainville racino, should Question 3 pass.

 

            State Representative Betty Poirier will be in costume as a state representative from an outside district visiting Attleboro without her own approval.

 

            The Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts will be dressing as people who want to spend some of their money gambling in casinos rather than bingo games or church raffles.  After the Pope’s comments this week, some might also dress as cast members of “The Big Bang Theory”.

 

            The Rehoboth Board of Selectmen will be walking throughout the community in costume as a packed Town Meeting pretending to have the best interests of the town as a whole in mind, but really there for only one specific purpose.

 

            Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick will dazzle and amaze when he dresses up as a sports reporter with a legitimate question who he can’t intimidate into silence.

 

            Mansfield Selectmen will be varying their approach to the holiday.  Some will go as newly available liquor licenses, others as voters who say they will shop at downtown stores but actually go to the malls and shopping plazas.  And of course, one will be dressed as a bilingual help wanted sign.

 

            The Foxboro Selectmen will be revealing some deep-seated fears with their costumes.  Some will be dressed as Robert Kraft, some as an electronic sign, and others as a town counsel with some backbone and capable of independent thought.  Plans to dress as the Open Meeting Law were dismissed as too difficult.

 

            Of course, inquiring minds want to know what your intrepid Sun Chronicle Columnist will be trick-or-treating as on this Halloween night.  I was originally going to opt for the frightening look, and thus simply go as I usually appear.  But at the last minute I decided to dress up as something truly terrifying.

 

            So if you see someone walking around in a NY Giants football jersey and wearing a NY Yankees baseball hat, please just wake me up and send me back to my therapist’s office. 

 

            Happy Halloween to all you kids out there, both big and small.

 

Bill Gouveia is a local columnist and can be emailed at aninsidelook@aol.com and followed on Twitter at @Billinsidelook.