But poor Bond just can’t seem to get a foothold in my interest, mostly because of the line I remember most from Casino Royale, where he’s falling in love with Vesper Lynd, and thinks maybe he can make it the long haul with her, seeing as “the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape.”

You keep it classy, Fleming.

However, I had some fun costumes back in the day! I think. I only remember four. Memory like a sieve, me.

Enjoy this handy guide! None of these costumes makes any sense.

Bag of Jelly Beans:

I was: Eight.

You will need: Black turtleneck and pants, white tulle, balloons.

It takes: Ten minutes to baste the tulle into a big bag, two minutes to thread ribbon around the top to tie around your neck, one million hours to blow up all the balloons.

You cannot: Sit down. Ever.

School Bus

I was: Nine.

You will need: magazine with pictures of people’s faces, huge cardboard box as long as you are tall, paint, refractive stickers, ropes for over your shoulders, really strong little horse-legs, patient relatives willing to get high off glue fumes for two days in advance getting this thing together.

It takes: A hundred million hours.

You cannot: Ever forgive that kid who dressed like a table set for dinner with his face bulging out of a bucket of pasta and walked right in front of you all night somehow no matter what houses you skipped trying to get ahead of him, and everyone was in raptures, and when the rest of my family asked excitedly, “What did people think? What did they say?!” I had nothing to tell them because all people said was, “Look how great this costume is – a table with pasta!”

Marie Antoinette:

I was: Sixteen.

You will need: 9 yards of brocade from the bargain bin, lace for the sleeve cuffs, ribbon for the front panel, cotton batting for a wig, white base, bright red lipstick, black pencil for the beauty mark, appropriate black pumps, a fake corset, a bum and hip roll you make out of some crazy series of stuffed pantyhose, a total lack of concern for what anyone in your high school thinks about your costume.

It takes: Ten hours for the dress, twenty hours for the wig, which will still look like shit no matter what you do, so you go to school looking like Marie Antoinette and the Cotton Candy Incident.

You cannot: Look at it ever again once you learn how the costumes were actually constructed and how much of it you did wrong.

Gandalf:

I was: Seven.

You will need: A long grey tunic your mom makes you, a grey cape, an awesome-ass cotton-batting beard, a big walking stick, brown pillowcase for candy, a witch hat from the dollar store covered in dark blue glitter.

It takes: Three hours.

You cannot: EVEN IMAGINE how many people don’t recognize Gandalf on site. I was appalled. I spent all of Halloween like this:

Neighbor: Oooh! Are you a wizard?

Me: [snottiest, most vicious tone imaginable] I am not A WIZARD, I am GANDALF THE GREY.

Neighbor: Who?

Me: Gandalf? The Hobbit? Lord of the Rings?

Neighbor: Well, you little boys certainly read a lot these days!

Me: …keep the candy.

I was such a little bastard. (I am still a bastard. I’m just bigger.)

Behold! An amazing book of etiquette from 1891.

It’s just as awesome as you could imagine. As someone who is often at a loss in social situations (damn you, salad fork, why must you look exactly like the dessert fork!), there’s something appealing about the idea of a book of manners that everyone is expected to read and follow. Practically, I know this leads to cotillion, so I won’t wish it on anyone.

(Note: everything I know about cotillion I learned from All I Want For Christmas, in which the young Ethan Embry (nee Randall) rescues his crush from a boring cotillion and proceeds to woo her in a diner? I think.)

(Oh, that and I went to a year of middle school in Texas, where girls were already discussing their coming-outs and how hard it would be to curtsey and how they were ALREADY PRACTICING for their curtseys. I was writing X-Files scripts in ProWrite on my dad’s computer when everyone was asleep. Just saying, thanks for that year in Catholic school, Mom and Dad!)

ANYWAY. MANNERS.

Dresses are from 1880, not 1891, but by 1891 everyone looked like a Gibson Girl and it gets all upsetting.

Ladies and gents, if you ever wondered what to do with your calling cards, well, now you’ll know!

Advice ranges from the useful:

When morning visitors are announced, rise and advance toward them. If a lady enters request her to be seated on a sofa; but if advanced in life, or the visitor be an elderly gentleman, insist on their accepting an easy chair, and place yourself, by them. If several ladies arrive at the same time, pay due respect to age and rank, and seat them in the most honorable places; these, in winter, are beside the fire.

To the obsolete:

When you are going abroad, intending to be absent for some time, you enclose your card in an envelope, having, first, written p.p.c. upon it;–they are the initials of the French phrase, “pour prendre conge”—to take leave, and may wit equal propriety stand for presents parting compliments.

To the screamingly horrific:

Conversing with Ladies.

If you are a gentleman, never lower the intellectual standard of your conversation in addressing ladies. Pay them the compliment of seeming to consider them capable of an equal understanding with gentlemen.

Visiting Acquaintances Alone.

Young married ladies may visit their acquaintances alone; but they may not appear in any public places unattended by their husbands or elder ladies. This rule must never be infringed, whether as regards exhibitions, or public libraries, museums, or promenades; but a young married lady is at liberty to walk with her friends of the same age, whether married or single. Gentlemen are permitted to call on married ladies at their own houses. Such calls the usages of society permit, but never without the knowledge and full permission of husbands.

So; useful resource and blood-pressure-raiser! Those Victorians knew how to make everything do double duty.