Poll Vault: What was your favorite Halloween costume?

Halloween isn't my thing. Never has been. The pressure of coming up with a costume is too stressful. As a kid in the late 1970s and the early '80s, I was content to wear those store-bought, vinyl coveralls with the ill-fitting plastic mask.

My younger brother, Patrick, on the other hand, loved Halloween. He's much more creative and artistic than I am, and he delighted in making his own elaborate costumes. In 1987, Patrick assembled a “Ghostbusters” costume complete with a proton pack.

One Halloween, perhaps to compete with my brother's costume ingenuity, I tried to go as Napoleon. I wore softball pants and one of my dad's sportcoats — a brown one, for some odd reason — and attempted to fashion two Long John Silver's pirate hats into a bicorne. Disaster.

Let's hear some of your Halloween triumphs and/or tragedies. What was your favorite costume as a kid?