I don’t agree that it’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, but I made an exception in this case. Our daughter wanted to have an “Alice in Wonderland”-themed party, with tea and decorations and flamingo croquet and friends wearing costumes. So, I rented a Mad Hatter outfit  - to greet (or scare away) the guests as they arrived – and THEN I asked our daughter if she was cool with  me dressing up at her party. She said ‘yes’ (provided it was a nice costume), and I said that was fortunate because I was going to do it anyway.

I’ve always taught our kids to make time to be silly. To me, the less self-conscious you are in life, the happier you will be. I’ve also put our kids on notice that I won’t purposefully try to embarrass them, but they’d better find friends with good senses of humor. And I don’t, and they have, and everybody had a good time.

Would your kid have been mortified if you crashed a party dressed like this? – Monty

PS: It takes a lot of Noxema to remove that grease paint.