A Turtle for Halloween

The last time Mr. Turtle had dressed in costume was 1984, but this year that would have to change. An important business contact had invited him to a party at a palatial estate on Long Island, a party that would make the difference between business and non business in the coming year. As a relative Halloween virgin, Turtle was unsure of where to start. He first visited some local costume shops only to find that they were geared exclusively towards men wishing to dress in varying degrees of drag. He then checked the aisles of a Rite Aid, but this close to the holiday all that was left in adult sizes was a collection of cat ear headbands.

There was a lot of pressure to think of something brilliant. The costume would have to be a just-right combination of serious and entertaining. It had to walk a line that would make Turtle, a Dilbert, appear fun-loving while still grounded in reality and prepared for a year of unflinchingly brain-crushing work. Having this sense about the costume was the only non-negotiable. Otherwise, he could be anything. The combination of this self-imposed mandate and virtually endless series of options was brain-crushing enough to make him wonder whether he deserved this potential business account in the first place.

When it became clear that the costume would have to be homemade, Turtle immediately thought of being a calculator. He had a thing for computation and a cardboard box, so ostensibly this was an easy solution. He drew some squares onto the box, which had originally housed his state-of-the-art flatscreen tv (with remote!). He lovingly stenciled numbers onto the squares, and balanced the box against a wall when he was done.

The project looked astoundingly over-simplified. As if he was the kind of person who could not be bothered to add the pi symbol to his costume. So, he set about turning his run-of-the-mill calculator into a scientific calculator, using his 1978, brick-like contraption as a model.

It was not until he was finished and out of room that he realized he had forgotten to add the parenthesis buttons. Without those, the calculator would not be very functional and his business contacts might worry that he was not capable of complicated arithmetic, let alone graphing functions and higher math. The whole project had been a waste. The box had to be removed immediately or it would haunt him all the way until the party.

Setting the project by the trash downstairs, he walked back towards the elevator, passing Lidia and Aggie. Both of them were dressed in very fashionable if not preemptively worn ladybug costumes, Lidia holding a mountain of candy in a plastic pumpkin bucket. They were taunting him with their stares at he, an un-costumed plebian, retreated to his un-festive apartment and left them to eat their candy and pose as bugs.

Back upstairs, Turtle passed the night in panic. It was not until the next morning, when he saw Emery sneaking back from a night out wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, that he had an idea. A tee-shirt. Something so simple. He put on a pair of slacks and dug into his dresser down past the starched button-downs, to a tee-shirt he remembered receiving from a vendor. He put it on. Presto! Casual Turtle was on the scene. Costume complete.

That night, Turtle took a car service into the wilds of Long Island. He arrived glowing with confidence, assuming that nobody would have trouble spotting the joke. “It’s a tee shirt!” he exclaimed to the security guard at the house’s front door. “Get it?”

The man opened the door hesitantly. Once inside Turtle found his future business associate dressed as a female lounge singer.

“It’s a tee-shirt! Get it?” he exclaimed with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

“Get what?” the man replied, smoothing his wig hair. “I don’t think I do. Did you not know this was a costume party?”