My mom has been doing some good blog posts highlighting great family Halloween costumes from the past.  (She posts them and then I steal the pictures!  It’s a great setup.)  She dredged this one up today of yours truly, circa 1991, during my "goth"* period.

I didn’t dress like this every day, but I must admit it was fun to try it once and the see the reaction of my peers.  (The suit would actually work quite nicely on the streets of Xining today…) Back then I was really a big fan of the oh-so-melancholic music of The Cure and you can see the look I was going for by comparing my photo with the photo of Robert Smith (The Cure’s lead singer) below.

If you know me now (or from a post-1996 context) and you’re trying to make sense of this new background information, well, my suggestion is: just don’t.  I can’t make much sense of it myself either.

Then again my life (spiritual destiny?) was forever changed in 1992 by the book of Ecclesiastes, so it still makes some sense in light of my personality…  "Vanity of vanities, chasing after the wind…"  Anyway, thought you would enjoy this little bit of cringe from me.  And there is nothing to fear; the mascara and lipstick have been relegated to the female members of my family.  (But for Anna and Sarah not until they are 20 or so…  (Ha.)

(*The Slang Dictionary from the UK describes goth as: 1. A youth culture phenomenon, derivative of ‘punk’, characterized by black clothes, long spikey or straggly hair and dour outlook. Also descriptive of their joyless style of music. The word derives from Gothic.)