Halloween pillow stuffing

Recalling the Bozo show balloon stuffing silliness in my last post reminded me of one particular instance I witnessed first-hand of Halloween pillow stuffing and of the strong effect it had on me. 

I think I was in 7th or 8th grade, and there was this one girl who liked me, her name was Maureen, and very cute and outgoing yet tomboyish blonde.  This was that especially awkward time of early pubescence when you never understood what was going on with boy-girl interactions, which I was too shy to act upon anyway.  It was also during this time when Halloween meant that I overcompensated for my feelings of inadequacy by dressing up to go trick-or-treating as something overtly grand, like an 18th Century British admiral, or some kind of recognizable literary character.  I think I was Sherlock Holmes that year (I wore a genuine deerstalker hat, an old camel hair overcoat, a plaid wool cape, and a tobacco pipe), speaking with a ridiculous British accent and saying things like "thank you for the Jujubees, my good man" when we'd get a treat.  My friends thought it was amusing enough at first, but in hindsight it probably got old by the 50th house we visited. 

So back to Maureen.  Like I said, she was cute and outgoing, and also wasn't shy about doing silly things because unlike me she was blissfully free of hang-ups.  So its Halloween and I'm out trick-or-treating with my friends and then I hear a big happy "hey!" and I turn and there's Maureen, dressed all in black and with a *huge* pillow-stuffed belly.  She was patting it on the sides (it was so big she couldn't get her arms all the way around it, so there were probably a few big pillows stuffed in there) and she had a huge smile on her pretty face.  She didn't have any makeup or a wig or anything, she was just in these big clothes stuffed with pillows.  Needless to say, I was totally flustered at the sight of her for reasons that I don't need to explain here. 

All I could do was ask, "uhh... what are you?"  I'm sure I blushed profusely as well. 

And she laughed and said, "a BUM!" and then she laughed some more and bounded off to catch up with her friends, her huge pillow belly bouncing with each step.  I could see then that she had a big pillow stuffed in each butt cheek of her pants too. 

She and her fat costume were all I could think about for the rest of the night and for days afterward, and I envied her that she could do such a thing without even a hint of embarrassment, and what's more with complete joy.