Mummy of Charlie Brown's Costume

In my mind's eye, "#costumefail" blazed before me in neon. (I may spend a bit too much time on social media.)

Recently I weathered a costume fail during one of our performance of our current Duck Soup Players production, "Murder on the Nile, or Where's My Mummy?"  NOT a "wardrobe malfunction," so nothing scandalous or exciting, but just a failure.

Spoiler Alert: I'm about to reveal a major plot point of our current Duck Soup Players production, "Murder on the Nile, or Where's My Mummy?" So stop reading now if you don't want to have a surprise ruined...

Where's the Mummy? Here's your mummy. I'm the mummy. Which you would probably guess if you did come to one of our shows as soon as you saw me in my mummy costume.

Sad mummy headshot

And to be perfectly honest, my costume didn't fail, I did. My costume was successfully doing what it was supposed to do, but I failed to actually bring all of it to the show. I failed to bring the most important part of a mummy costume: my mask.

There was definitely a moment of panic when I went to put on my costume and I realized that I had forgotten my mask. I kept looking through my "show suitcase" (the totally awesome light-up kitten suitcase Chad got me) in the hopes that it would magically turn up, but I finally had to accept the truth. No mummy mask for me.

My real mummy mask with surprisingly
fashionable costume

Frantically I started running through my options, trying to figure out what I could do. No Plan B came to mind though (later it occurred to me that I could have went with a paper bag in homage to the "Unknown Comic" of the 70's).

Luckily, I did have some extra gauze in my show bag. We were a bit stymied by how to cut eye holes in it, but eventually one of our audience members found a (very not designed for cutting fabric) pair that Chad made do with.

We averted disaster, but it was certainly not ideal. I looked like the mummy of Charlie Brown's Halloween costume. It was especially a bummer because my mask looked pretty darn good, and Chad, yes, Chad worked really hard on it. He glue gunned up a storm (and didn't trust me a with a glue gun).

I did contribute some to the effort though, by dyeing the gauze with tea. Egg nog-scented tea, in fact, so that my mummy costume smells like Christmas. Chad thinks the smell is rather obnoxious but I think it's charming.

My Charlie Brown mask was also hard to keep on but I made it through the show. Thankfully, when I got home discovered that my actual mask was resting on the bedroom floor, and not lost at a previous performance space as we had feared.

Ironically, I think I forgot my mask because I was trying to be organized and efficient...I even wore part of my mummy costume to work, so I wouldn't have to spend as much time changing. Okay, it was just the leggings, which are pretty normal looking leggings with just some extra lace. They actually go with several dresses I have, because I love lace so much.

I don't think I'll ever wear my mummy mask to work, or social events, though, even if it is really awesomely Chad-crafted and eggnog scented.