There Is No Sheriff Here

October twenty-seventh. What happened was: I walked past the bulletin board at the rec center on Thursday and there was a flyer for a Halloween costume contest and I read it, looked away, and then, without making any kind of conscious decision, I turned around and wrote my name on the sign-up sheet. Just like that. Before the part of my brain that handles risk assessment could weigh in.

The costume was assembled entirely from existing apartment materials, which I feel is important context. The plaid flannel was already mine. The dark jeans were already on my body. The brown ankle boots are essentially a permanent fixture at this point. The sheriff's badge was forty-nine cents at the drugstore. The rope loop was actual rope I found under the kitchen sink and have no memory of acquiring. The cowboy hat was borrowed from a coworker's locker with permission and mild confusion. Total spend: forty-nine cents. Commitment level: apparently absolute.

I did not win. Let the record show that I came in second, behind a person dressed as a very convincing cardboard box robot, and I have no argument with that outcome. What I did win was a plastic cauldron full of fun-size Snickers bars, which was technically the runner-up prize but felt, in the moment, like the superior award. The cauldron is now on my kitchen counter. Gerald the pothos is eyeing it.

The trophy found its rightful owner.

Here is the thing about saying yes before you think about it: sometimes the not-thinking is the entire point. I have talked myself out of so many things with such efficiency that occasionally the only way around the system is to move faster than it.

Reach for the sky, I guess.

The Snickers are almost gone. The hat went back to the locker. The rope is back under the sink. The badge is on the windowsill between the collapsed bowl and the letterpress card, because apparently that windowsill has a policy about keeping strange small objects, and I have stopped questioning it.