Yep. Today, I’m comin’ atcha with a Luigi costume. For girls! (I’ll get to the boys’ version tomorrow, hopefully.) Trust me when I say that this is awesome, you guys. I was in my brother’s room, poking around, as is my way (I was actually looking for the iHome that he borrowed from me), and I saw these super old Nintendo cartridges from when I was a kid.
I was born in 1986, and the original Nintendo console was big when I was a kid. For some inexplicable reason, we had one. I don’t know why. My parents were both immigrants (legal citizens, naturalized, everything). My mom had just come to the country for the first time in 1982, while my dad had been here since 1971.
They were young and educated, but due to the fact that they had basically uprooted their lives and come to the states when Boston University offered my mom a full ride for her Masters and PhD in Economics if she taught a computer class or two, they were still in the missing class – the class between lower middle class and the working poor, who are on government assistance. They never took government assistance of any kind, except normal charity deductions on their taxes, blah blah, but they certainly weren’t middle class. Hell, the only reason we were able to afford living in a big house (two very spacious living units, basically a vertical townhouse) that looked just like the home JFK grew up in – except ours had a much better paint job – was because our elderly Italian landlady loved my parents and never raised the rent over $300 in the 16ish years we lived there.
Anyway, long tangent aside, these people were the LAST people on the planet that you’d think would buy a Nintendo console of their own volition. I still have no idea why they did. I mean, I was 4 when we got it. I was an only child. My parents didn’t have a ton of extra money to throw around and would likely have deemed a gaming console, when neither one of them had EVER played video games, a frivolity.
Who knows? Maybe my dad was persuaded by one of those studies that said that video games increased hand-eye coordination and so he bought one for me. Maybe he was at the store one day and it tickled his fancy and he just went for it. Maybe the kids of some of his friends had it and loved it and he bought it so they’d have something fun to do when they came over to our house. Maybe my mom bugged him to get it for her. I don’t know. I should ask.
Anyway, we had that super old Nintendo console with the one cartridge that had both Duck Hunt and Super Mario on it. You know the one. Every now and then it wouldn’t work so you would have to pull it out and blow on it and then put it back in. That’s what she said.
I was so flipping good at Duck Hunt as a four year old, but God, I hated that stupid dog. Who didn’t?
(Although, seriously, this is a pretty hilarious tattoo.)
I wasn’t brave enough to try Super Mario at age four (it was scary, as most things were at that age and also at this, my current age), so I left it alone. My mother, on the other hand, loved it.
She was a student/adjunct professor at that time, and she was working on her dissertation. Two nights a week, she’d leave me with my dad and he’d make me spaghetti while she went and taught some computer class at BU. I don’t know why they had her teaching computers – C++ and Pascal and Fortran – because she didn’t know one thing about those languages. She used to tell me that she taught it by staying one lesson ahead of her students. Ahahaha. (She was serious. I suspect at least one of my professors during law school did the same thing.)
So sometimes, when she was sick of studying, sick of housework, sick of writing and doing her lame econometrics calculations, and sick of me, she’d put me down for my nap after lunch and instead of watching her soaps (devotees would remember that as a new American, my mother started watching ABC soaps as soon as she got off the plane in Boston because she wanted to learn all about the American culture of extra marital affairs and evil twin brothers and long lost babies that were supposed to be dead but weren’t and were back in town and f—king your new husband of two weeks – it’s a rich heritage you guys have, really) would play Super Mario.
She would play it compulsively, you guys. By her own admission. Like Alberto Gonzales, I have no recollection of this. I was too busy napping and mediating fights between my giant grey rabbit and my normal-sized blue velvet rhinoceros. (They were each jealous of the attention the other got.)
But my mom would be in the living room, clicking away on that little controller, trying to get past the level with the flying mushroom things that try to kill you and rescue Princess Peach who was always off getting herself into trouble.
She was ADDICTED.
A year or so later, I was into it, too, so we’d play together. And then she started playing less, so I just played on my own, but eventually grew out of it.
So today’s outfit is inspired by one of the players in this old game, Luigi. And this outfit is for the girls – all the girls that used to love playing Super Mario. <3
A little bit of history: Luigi is Mario’s younger brother. He’s taller, thinner, and has his own little costume that is distinct from his brother’s. Whereas Mario is reportedly named after real estate developer Mario A. Segale, who owned the Nintendo America headquarters and barged in one day, very angry, demanding that the late rent payment be made immediately, before agreeing to give them some more time and leaving without it (although Mario remains tight-lipped about his immortalization and says he’s still waiting for the royalty checks), Luigi was named for a pizza parlor near Nintendo America headquarters named, you guessed it, Mario & Luigi’s.
After telling you way too much about my family and upbringing, let’s get on to the outfit.
Overalls ………. $28.90
3/4 Sleeve Scoop Neck in Rainforest ………. $14.99
Wingtip Oxfords ………. $15.99
Pistil Cami Cap in Green ………. $27
These overalls were the best I could find as far as the selection for women was concerned. There are nowhere near enough overalls for women, you guys! Which, I guess, is a good thing. Overalls are only adorable on children, and appropriate for children and farmers.
These ones from Forever21 are cropped and fitted, for a more ‘feminine’ look or whatever (it’s not girly unless it’s skin-tight, I guess), so … eh. I paired them with this green top, and I just felt like going with brown oxfords. Luigi wears closed toe, no-frills shoes, but these just kind of stood out to me. So why not?
Finally, I topped it all off with a green cap that I found at Zappo’s that fits the bill (hah) quite nicely, I think.
And there we have a great business casual adaptation of Luigi’s costume for girls. And way too much information about the socio-economic aspect of my upbringing.
o_O
