The Real Eugene Grygo?
To say the least, it’s been a little hard to find and maintain your sense of humor during 2020, a year generally regarded as a living Hell for many and a modern Purgatory for others. No one has escaped its unique horrors.
But, for this Halloween, we might turn the tables on fate. We can put on costumes and many masks and try to escape our current, harsh realities even if it’s only for a short time.
So, with a little help from my colleagues at FTF, we have created the following costume suggestions that speak for this year.
- The Lockdown: Find your best pajamas and slippers. Put them on. Put on a raincoat to cover the jammies in case you get called into a meeting. Put on a mask and tie your hands to a computer keyboard and chain yourself to a desk. Tape phones to your ears. Keep working around the clock until your face falls into the keyboard.
- The Paper Shortage: Dress in your best suit. If you can, buy reams of paper towels, toilet paper, or paper napkins. Wrap yourself carefully in a paper product of your choice. Put on a colorful face mask and stand in the middle of a store. Let the Zombie people rip off the paper products until they see your suit. Dust yourself off. Repeat.
- The Blursday: Put on your best suit. Find a desktop, paper calendar, and rip out all the days. Cover yourself in the paper calendar days of2020 until you look as if you have scales like a lizard with paper skin. Go to a hall of mirrors and keep spinning until all the dates of the year blend into one hypnotic day.
- The CAT Walk: To honor the trials and tribulations of the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) amid the pandemic, find and put on a black catsuit. Wear a pair of cat ears, a cat-eye eye mask or glasses, and a long tail. Write FINRA & SEC on pieces of paper and tape them to body parts that seem appropriate. Walk around with a confused look on your face and meow a parody, “(Lack of) Memory,” about your Big
The Real Maureen Lowe?
Data IT woes. Watch the recent movie version of “Cats,” and then cough up a hairball.
- The Zoom & Gloom Fatigue Mask: Make a computer screen out of cardboard and glue a still shot of “The Brady Bunch” TV show intro onto it. Cut out holes for your eyes, nose, and mouth/mask. Glue the contraption onto your face. Wear business casual on the top and sweatpants (or worse) on the bottom. Shout “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?” until someone screams back at you. Wander aimlessly in cyberspace.
- The Remote Worker: Put on your best loungewear. Include your slippers. Hold a laptop with two baby dolls pinned to each of your hips. Stick a full flask in your pocket and yell at the top of your lungs, “GET ON GOOGLE CLASSROOM!” randomly while typing furiously on your keyboard. Quote lines from “Mommie Dearest.”
- Global Markets Volatility: Print out graphs and charts showing market declines and upswings and cover parts of your body. Quote meaningless reports on Dow points and percentages. Try to understand market volatility indexes. Give horrifying advice. Tape a vintage slinky toy to a body part and do the volatility dance. Walk around saying, “There goes my retirement! Sell! No, buy! No, hold! No **** it!!!”
- The Frightening Fed Face: Wear a business suit and a Masquerade Mask of gold that spikes and drops in value. Pretend to be providing inscrutable answers before a Congressional subcommittee. Chop the air with your hands. Pretend to slash everything in sight. Scream “NO NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES!!!” until hoarse. Contradict the president in public.
- The Paycheck Protection Program/Bailout Masquerade: Create a sandwich board big enough to cover you. Both flaps of the sandwich board read “PPP” in bright, bloody red. Fill a bucket with fake money. Wear an eye mask for sleeping and a face mask for protection. Walk blindly onto the street and randomly throw handfuls of money at strangers.
- The “I am 2020” Body Suit: Print out photos of every possible catastrophe you can think of. Pin or glue them to your outfit. Go five days without showering or doing other personal hygiene care. Wear an eye mask used for sleeping (and protective face mask) that reads, “2020.”
- And the Digital Transformation: First dress like Captain James T. Kirk (or any other member of the classic “Star Trek” series.) Find a convenient wormhole that will take you through the universe. Move forward in time until you reach the Starship Enterprise. Beg the crew to beam you backward in time to Halloween 2021 or 2022. Or whatever year marks a return to near-normal. Thank the crew and try to take a Tribble home with you. (They’re cute.)
And Happy Halloween!
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