From “The Horror, The Horror” (How It Was: Autumn, by John E. Simpson):
Sometimes the question originated with The Boy’s mother, sometimes his brother or one of his sisters; one of his grandparents might ask it first, or one of his friends. But they all would ask it eventually, at least once every autumn:
“What are you going to be for Halloween?”
It was an odd question — the point of Halloween, after all, was not what he would be but what he would do, which was to glut himself stupid on chocolates, nuts, marshmallow, nougat, jellies, and sundry miscellaneous stickinesses — yet on the other hand it was not an odd question at all: in costume, he really did become someone else.
This was not the “become” of ambition or career, as in the (also perennial) question of what he hoped to become when he grew up. That question was thornier of texture, murkier of possibility, scarier. (The only thing The Boy wanted to be when he grew up was, well, The Boy.)
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