Twice this past week I have donned a gorilla suit for the purpose of -- well, no purpose really, just the excuse of it being Halloween and people are less likely to think you're crazy for wearing a gorilla suit then than, say, on Easter or the Fourth of July. I spent a couple of hours in costume at my church's fall festival last Saturday evening, but the real fun was showing up that way at work on Halloween. As a young man on campus said to me as he admired my get-up, "Everyone should have their own gorilla suit." He didn't say everyone should wear theirs to work, but I can recommend it based on my own experience. So, besides the three pounds of water weight I lost sweating in my own personal rain forest, what's the upside of being "ape for a day"?
Everybody loves the guy in a gorilla suit. Other than a couple of small children whom I had to charm out of being terrified, most people approached me like they would a cute stray dog -- a little wary but dying to scratch me behind the ears. Perfect strangers stopped and asked to take my picture. (I hope I can get a copy of the photo one parent took of me with her small child dressed in a banana costume.) I brazenly walked up to any number of people and gave them big hugs. While I did receive a few incredulous looks, I had the impression that many people wished they had had the nerve to dress up like a gorilla.
You can get away with a lot dressed as a gorilla. I picked nits out of a university president's hair, for heaven's sake! (Imaginary nits, of course; the president actually is quite well groomed.) What's more, he knew it was me in the suit. The only thing between me and a swift demotion was a thin layer of latex and synthetic fur.
You can be whoever you want to be when you're a gorilla. At my church's fall festival one woman said to my teenage daughter, "We don't know your parents very well yet ... Is this normal for your dad?" (Come to think of it, my daughter never told me how she answered that question.) Most people, even in my own family, seemed surprised that I would dress as a gorilla. Even I might say that this was a step outside my comfort zone. But who knows, maybe this was stepping into my comfort zone. Recently I heard someone point out that I was not an "acting" dean; I quipped that I tried not to act like a dean any more than necessary.
Gorillas have more fun. I gave away bananas on which I had written slogans like, "In case of 800 lbs gorilla, break peel," and "Forbidden Zone or bust!" I passed out a report of activities for the Provost's Fellow for Simian Success. I visited each of the college's department offices and greeted all the folks there. I even had my picture taken with Dr. Nietzel. And what's more fun than scaring the pee-waddin1 out of a few colleagues?
Obviously, dressing as a gorilla gave me permission to do things that ordinarily I would not dare to do. That's really the point of dressing up for Halloween, isn't it? When else can kids show up on your doorstep demanding candy without it being gauche? In that sense, we all need gorilla suits. For some it's being on stage or writing or standing in front of a classroom. It can be as simple as someone speaking encouragement when you take a risk, or not finding fault when you fail. What creates the space for you to step outside the ordinary and expected, to be bold? Just as important, how do you create that space for others? That's something else I noticed about being a gorilla: being a gorilla requires more than just the guy in the suit. Until someone interacts with you, you're just a sweaty guy in a furry coat. The real fun is when people act as differently toward you as you are acting toward them. The suit works both ways, it appears.
I don't know if I'll come to work dressed as a gorilla again; certainly it would not have the same shock value a second time. But now people know that I am a person who would do something like wear an ape costume to the office, and that opens up new possibilities for all of us.
1 For a precise definition of pee-waddin see http://users.aristotle.net/~russjohn/literary/arbonics.html.
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