She came to me with a puzzled look on her face. And she looked as if her concern was genuine. Something she couldn't quite figure out. I thought maybe it was a sticky algebra problem, or, perish the thought, I feared some boy had upset her. She is 11, after all; the age when problems begin to loom larger and more frequently.

"Dad," she finally said, "I can't decide what to wear for Halloween."

I breathed easier and told her I was relieved.

We hopped in the car and went down to see what was hanging on their shelves.

I suggested the ballerina costume. She rolled her eyes.

"How about this Barbie outfit?" I asked.

"Dad, I'M ELEVEN!!"

OK then, how about this Princess of Darkness thing here?"

That didn't appeal to her either. Nothing did. She looked all around, glancing at a nun outfit, a clown, a Ninja and a BatGirl costume.

"Hey, here's a Power Rangers outfit. How about this?"

She rolled her eyes again.

"You know, when I was a kid, we dressed up as REAL superheroes," I said. "Like Superman. Superman was great because he could save the entire universe from mass destruction AND make it back in time to take Lois out for a nice dinner. Your Superheroes wear pink and do Karate. Your generation has run out of ideas."

"What ... is ... that?" she asked, her voice shaking, her hands trembling uncontrollably. She pointed to the top shelf nervously.

"Oh that? Calm down sweetheart, it's OK."

"But what is it, Dad? It's hideous."

"Don't worry, honey, it's just a Mick Jagger mask. Just be glad they've sold out of the Keith Richards. THAT will scare you REAL bad."

She ran from the store, weeping uncontrollably at the site of the Mick head. Kids, they'll never understand our generation.

This is the first year we've had such a problem picking out a Halloween costume. Last year wasn't that much work at all. Our 11-year-old just dressed up with fangs and our 8-year-old was a princess. Our 3-year-old stumbled into a cosutme quite by accident one day while rooting through his mother's makeup table. He found her bottle of Vaseline and smeared it all over his face. So we just kept it there, sent him out trick or treating and called him Petro Boy. He scared people so much that they threw candy at him and it stuck to his face like magic. <continued below>

This year is different. With our oldest daughter embarking on the "Life's Not Fair" stage, she was having a real problem figuring out what to wear for Halloween, blaming it all on the unfairness aspect.

A few days later she came be-bopping in the door and told me she had finally figured out what to do.

"Dad," she said. "I'm going trick or treating dressed as you."

"Me?"

"You."

"Why me?"

"All the kids are doing it."

"All the kids are going as ME for Halloween?"

"No Dad, all the kids are going as one of THEIR parents from when they were kids in the '70s."

"So you have to do it too, huh? I suppose if all the kids said they were going to dress up like Barney you'd have to dress up like Barney, too, huh?"

She told me to get serious.

I thought for a few minutes about how we could make her look like me as a teenager from the '70s. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It was a brilliant idea.

"OK," I said, "we can't just go to the grocery store for the costume. We'll have to go to the Salvation Army. We'll need to get you some faded blue jean hip huggers, a pschedlic polyester shirt with elephant-ear collars and a pen protector for your pocket. Oh, and you'll need glasses, too. The plastic rimmed kind. And we'll have to get you a portable 8-track player that you can set up on your shoulder. And you'll need a Bee Gees tape to listen to."

My daughter looked as me as though I was speaking in a foreign language. It looked like she might be having second thoughts, but it was too late for her to turn back now.

"Oh, and we can't forget platform shoes and white socks. And a brown afro wig. We CANNOT forget the afro wig. But it has to be brown. Can't be a blonde afro wig. Don't want you lookin' like Big Bird. I want you lookin' like me."

We zipped through the store in record time. If it was faded, made of polyester or totally useless, I threw it in our shopping cart. We hurried home and I encouraged my daughter to change into her Dad costume immediately. Twenty minutes later, she was still hard at it.

I knocked on the door.

"Hey would you hurry up. You're dressing up as me, not your mother. It shouldn't be taking this long," I said.

Finally, she stepped out.

I let out an ear-splitting, blood-curdling scream. As though I had seen a mouse or a spider or something much worse.

"Woooo-eee, your ARE scary," I said. "And I thought the Keith Richards mask was ugly."

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