The American Constitution Hard at Work

In an e-mail, my sister-in-law, L, asked, "What are you going to be for Halloween?  I don't know what would beat Flo, probably nothing.  But, you'll try I'm sure."

So here's last year's Flo costume:

And did I beat it? 

I'll let you be the judge.

Wait, what is that?... is that...? Is that what I think it is??

Yup. It's

THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

The right to bear arms.

So now that I've told you the end, I'm gonna pull a Quentin Tarantino and go back to the beginning. Waaaay back to the beginning of my hairy tale (see what I did there?) to June, I think, when I read a headline in the paper at work. The headline said "Something Something Something The Right to Bear Firearms" and it amused me, and I smirked (or at least I would have) and thought, that's funny because now you can't make it a pun. And then I laughed out loud (my co-workers must've thought I was mad) because BEAR ARMS. So then, BEAR ARMS is running through my head all day long (and still made me laugh) because we all know how much I LOVE puns.

And then the costume idea was born. 

And this is how that went:

The Beginning. This also spurned a "bear skin rug" idea... more on that later.

Then it turned into:

The right to bear arm.

And you can't have bear arms without...

Let me open that for you with my BEAR HANDS

One last little detail to pull it all together...

Why only four stripes you ask? Either I was too lazy or I only recognize 4 original colonies. Your choice.

So now we've come full circle and it's the end again. I'd post the after photo again, but you can just scroll back up. Finger exercise. 

WAIT! A Twist! 

It's not the really the end! Remember when I said "More on that later" ?!?! That was foreshadowing. Astute readers would have gotten it. 

Bear. Skin. Rug.

Now all I need is an appropriately-colored and -sized teddy bear to decapitate so he'll have a head.

The [actual] End.

really.