fridaA friend called during the week, reminding me of another friend’s Halloween party this past Saturday.

I was non-committal about making plans and closed our conversation with ”I’ll let you know.”

Truth is I had never managed to attend Joe’s annual party and always wanted to go, but the event had not been on my radar, and I had not given any thought to costume ideas.

I used to love dressing up for Halloween. Rather than buy whatever costume concept was trending, I would take a very homemade approach, often enlisting the help of friends who were more patient with a paint brush or could provide finishing touches that I couldn’t do (from inside whatever structure I concocted).

One year, I went as an ATM, a cash station. One year, I made a simple dress out of an Astroturf-like fabric and made a small hat with “ears” out of the same material. The only Chia Pet I’ve ever seen on Halloween.

But I didn’t have fresh ideas and I was close to giving up on going when my friend Lynne suggested I dress up as Mexican painter – and practically the inventor of selfies — Frida Kahlo.

Many years ago, I saw a friend successfully transform herself into Frida and doubted whether I could pull it off. Keen on recycling clothes I don’t wear, I couldn’t recall having a print skirt or Mexican style peasant blouse in the back of my closet.

But Lynne gave me a shopping list and was willing to loan me a colorfully embroidered cotton dress. She told me to visit the dollar store and buy eyebrow pencil and plastic flowers.

I thought I would anchor an aluminum foiled covered pole behind my bra strap as a twisted way to refer to the bus accident she lived through while a teenager.

An hour before heading out for the party, I showed up at Lynne’s. I shimmied into the Mexican smock she picked out for me and sat down on her couch as she drew in the infamous UNIBROW.

She placed a few of the dollar store flowers in my hair. (We both laughed at the fact that already gearing up for the next big decorating holiday, my options were limited to plastic poinsettias.)

There. Done.

Proud of her make-up job, Lynne brought out a hand mirror. Unaccustomed to wearing eyebrow pencil at all, let alone wearing it in an area that should be blank, I remember hoping that I wouldn’t accidentally rub my face during the night and smear my temporary bushy brows.

I put on a little lipstick and some dangly earrings. As I was leaving her apartment, we both noticed a stuffed animal in her living room, a little red monkey. We remembered that Frida was often seen with a pet monkey, and I draped the plaything’s arms around my neck and shoulders.

People at the party recognized the character pretty much right away, although one youngish woman looked at me for a while before looking for validation on her best guess.

“Salma Hayek?” she asked tentatively.

Close enough. I gently corrected her.

“Salma Hayek played her in the movie.”

I chatted and grazed from a great buffet with a devil, a sombrero shaded, gun toting bandito and his jalapeno pepper partner, a prison guard and inmate, an owl and a few skeletons.

I coyly asked some of the partiers if they wanted to pet my monkey.

All in all, I had a great time.

Thanks to my friend’s creativity and her closet, not to mention the proximity of a dollar store, I got to play dress-up for the evening for less than $5.

Play is the operative word.

Yes, kids in my neighborhood will ring doorbells on the 31st and fill up satchels or plastic molded jack-o-lanterns with miniature Snickers and such, but Halloween has become an occasion when adults give themselves permission to play.

There’s definitely a certain kind of freedom that comes from being yourself in the world. There’s also a wonderful sense of freedom and joy to be experienced from not being yourself, from making yourself appear practically unrecognizable.

Playing dress-up is no small thing.