Halloween Paparazzi

There were tricks, there were lots of treats and there were weird people taking pictures of my kid. I don’t know why, but this happens every year. Does this ever happen to you? Maybe this is something totally normal, but to me it is a little strange.


You might have read about my “costume situation” a couple days ago and felt absolutely sorry for me (or maybe not, but I sure did!). We ended up going shopping the next day and hit the costume jackpot! We went to Rexall (a local pharmacy) in total desperation and came across a Harry Potter costume kit. There was a cloak, clasp, wand and of course the glasses for $7.99 (I know!!). Mason was super excited to be Harry Potter, but there was just something missing from the costume....a tie! We went across the street to Value Village (a thrift store) and bought a tie that looked like it was straight from Hogwarts for $1.99. So his whole costume cost around $10 total. I don’t know if it was the costume itself, or the fact that I spent so little on his costume, but I was absolutely thrilled and couldn’t wait to go out trick or treating.

In fact, I was so excited that I decided to dress up as well. If you can guess who I was then you win bonus points, which means absolutely nothing other than I think you’re cool. I actually had fun dressing up until someone asked me if I was Ugly Betty, which I’m pretty sure was a subtle way of telling me I am an ugly jerk, so I took off my costume at that point.

We went to a local church where they had set up a lot of fun little games for the kids. At each station you could win a prize which was a piece of candy. All of the games were really clever and most were church related. Like the Jonah and the Whale game where you would put a butterfly net into a cardboard whale’s mouth and candy would be put in your net. It took me ten minutes of trying to figure out just how they got the candy to drop into the net, when I realized there was a sweaty little boy in the whale’s mouth the whole time.

So as I was pondering the mechanics of this whale game, a (rather strange) lady came up to me and asked if she could take my son’s picture. What are you supposed to say? I had to say yes or risk looking like a total bitch or a murderer who is trying to hide from the law and doesn’t want her child’s picture taken. Kind of like those forms they send home from school saying you have to sign to give the school permission to publish your child’s name/photo for any reason. Do you guys sign that form? I always feel like I have to, not that I mind or anything, I guess that’s a little bit different.

So smelly weird lady said she wanted to take his picture, but here’s the catch, I had to bring him to her house (which was like a 20 minute walk away mind you) because her camera was at home so she invited us to trick or treat there *alarm bells* so I said okay see you later, with absolutely no intention of entering her crazy castle to become a lamp shade or have our eyeballs collected in little jars. Thanks but no thanks.

So later on we were playing more games and I see a man and a woman taking a picture of my kid. Like not even asking him to pose or anything, just sort of candidly taking his picture. Kind of strange, these people didn’t even ask me...heck they didn’t even ask him! I realize I willingly post my child’s picture online, but to me it’s a little bit different for someone to come up with a camera and take a picture of my kid. I remember the same sort of thing happened to me one year when I was a kid. My mom dressed me up as a dead person and a lady asked us to go to her house so her husband could take our picture, and we did (stupid girls!), luckily nothing bad happened, actually her husband was a really nice guy and gave us lots of candy, but it could have turned out so differently.

First of all, what do they do with the picture? I know with digital photography so readily available it’s a little different these days, you can click away until your battery dies, or until you leave your camera in a laptop bag that you returned to Wal-Mart (oh hi, that was me!), and nobody thinks twice about it. I guess it means no harm because anybody could come along and save pictures from my site, my Facebook or my Flickr without me even knowing. I think it’s just the fact that I wouldn’t want to keep a picture of someone else’s kid so I don’t understand why they would want a picture of my kid. It would be a little different if they were taking a picture of everybody’s kid instead of picking out one child.

Another house we went to had a web cam set up so when the kids came to the door they were filmed for whatever reason. Mason’s aunt and I agreed that it was probably for some sick person on their death bed who wasn’t able to see all the kids and he really wanted to, that’s what made us feel better about the situation. But where do you draw the line?

I’m not sure of the reasoning of taking pictures of other people’s children. Obviously it didn’t bother me too much, but I still can’t help but wonder why. If he was the real Harry Potter I would have set up a photo booth and autograph table and charged people $40 for him to sign things . but he’s just a little boy, who had a really awesome costume.


So as a parent, what would you do in the same situation? Would it be different if the person came up and asked you to take a picture or if they just started getting snap happy? Do YOU take pictures of kids you don’t know? What would you do if someone called you Ugly Betty? I wanna know!