In April of 2001 I saw the live action Josie and the Pussycats movie.

When I was on spring break I took a trip to the local mall looking for a prom dress.  At the Suncoast store I saw them; an official Josie and the Pussycats headband. It even said they were official on the label. I had to justify a reason for buying the cat ears. I decided to work them into a Halloween costume even if Halloween was seven months away.

I wore them for like a week at home. I like to wear them while eating ramen noodles like they did in a scene in the movie.

Besides the ears I also wanted a matching Josie and the Pussycats shirt. A few of the rocker girls at my school had those shirts that they sold in catalogues and at the local Hot Topic. I thought it would look great with my Josie ears. I was so mad because I never got a shirt.

That year my high school was being lazy with homecoming spirit week idea themes. They purposely scheduled spirit week during the week of Halloween. At least it wasn’t as bad as the time they scheduled spirit week during the week of Veteran’s Day. That was super lazy!

Everybody at school had caught the patriotic spirit because of September 11^th and wore patriotic costumes to school. Well except me and a few other people. I had planned this costume months in advance. A popular costume was one inspired by the Destiny’s Child music video “Survivor”. Another thing to do was have an American flag prop with your costume even if having the flag as a prop made no sense.

The store bought Josie and the Pussycats costumes came with a tail. I didn’t make a tail to go with mine. The store bought costumes I saw were only in kid sizes anyway.

I decided to wear the costume to school the problem was that everybody thought I was just a cat. I was so mad! I was getting older and wearing more ambiguous costumes. That was my last year going out to Trick or Treat, but I didn’t know that at the time.

A few days later my cousin had a party and costumes were optional. Hardly anybody showed up in a costume. I was tired because I had gone to the homecoming game the night before, and because I had to wake up early to take the SATs. It was a good thing though since my cousin’s friend wore a Josie costume, and it was way better than mine. I would have felt embarrassed.