Hosey: If the costume fits you might as well wear it

Last Halloween may have been the scariest ever, as just going out trick-or-treating could have been enough to get you killed by the coronavirus.

Fortunately, things have settled down in time for this year’s Halloween, so everyone can just pretend to be frightened and not really worry about having to die.

This is a promising development, but that doesn’t mean everything’s great. Far from it, in fact, as yes, you might be able to go trick-or-treating, but with all these supply chain problems, all the ships backed up at West Coast harbors, the train cars sitting idle in rail yards and semitrailers waiting for containers so they can drive all over Joliet’s South End.

This supply chain snarl is making all sorts of products scarce, including, undoubtedly, Halloween costumes.

After all, it’s hard to imagine that any of these costumes, from the Bad Habit Nun to Sergeant Short Pants, are made here in America. No, these costumes are made, of all places, in China, and are probably stuck somewhere in transit from there to here in America’s Midwest.

That being the case, you might have to make your own costume for tomorrow. And that’s where we can help. Not with actually designing or constructing a costume, mind you, but with providing you with ideas, with a general backstory for each of these characters so you can get to work and make it yourself.

One of our big ideas was for the Corporal Punishment costume, which will certainly look scary once you put it together.

The idea behind Corporal Punishment is he returns to America after enduring the horrors of war during the invasion of Panama, then finds great success in civilian life, landing a job as the administrator of the state’s third largest city despite a complete lack of municipal experience. But before long the trauma of Panama catches up to him and he punishes the police chief by inexplicably firing her, hence the name. That could make a nice costume for City Manager Jim Capparelli.

And then we envisioned the Thumper costume. Thumper is a terrifying bunny rabbit. He’s enormous, at least for a rabbit, standing as tall as your average middle-aged man, and his reputation for stomping around and snatching up innocent pedestrians with his yellowed fangs precedes him as he strikes fear in the hearts of all. Maybe Mayor Bob O’Dekirk would look good in a getup like that.

While we were working on those two we came up the Mysterious Unmasked Masked Man, a humble hero who wears a Lone Ranger mask across his eyes while he does good deeds that others take credit for, like saving the Rialto from firebugs and rooting out financial impropriety at the park district, and tracking down the remains of Brian Laundrie.

What he doesn’t wear is a mask over his nose and mouth, because he is strong and virile, and works out and takes vitamins. A costume like this just might fit a guy like City Councilman Joe Clement.

Those costume ideas should be enough to give you a good start when you’re getting ready for tomorrow, and we didn’t even get to the Cowardly State’s Attorney, the one who can roar a good game but always clams up and hides behind a special prosecutor whenever things get tricky. That one’s been around forever.

• Joe Hosey is the editor of The Herald-News. You can reach him at 815-280-4094, at jhosey@shawmedia.com or on Twitter @JoeHosey.