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For Halloween this year, I dressed as the leg lamp from “A Christmas Story.”

For Halloween this year, I dressed as the leg lamp from “A Christmas Story.”

amputee halloween Leg Lamp Costume Amputee Leg Lamp

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Josh Sundquist Amputee Halloween Costumes FAQ

Where do you get the ideas for your costumes?

I give humorous motivational speeches for a living. So while you are at work or school all day, I am sitting at my desk at home or in an airplane en route to a speech thinking of amputee jokes. Sometimes those ideas become part of a speech. Sometimes they become a costume.

Where did you get these ideas specifically?

  • Gingerbread man—from Shrek. (You know, not the gumdrop buttons)
  • Leg lamp—My then-girlfriend-now-wife Ashley suggested this. (Growing up as a sheltered homeschooler I had never actually seen “A Christmas Story.” I only watched it after the costume became popular online and people kept saying “frah-gee-lay” to me and I didn’t get it.)
  • Flamingo—I was just at the zoo one time and I noticed that flamingos look like me doing a crutch handstand. So yeah.
  • Foosball player—A YouTube subscriber suggested this to me at VidCon. I thought it was appropriate since that was the first year I was playing in the World Cup as a member of the US Amputee Soccer Team.
  • IHOP—Two legged people are always talking about hopping in bed or hopping in the shower. But really, they step. I actually hop in. Which is all to say that a hopping-themed costume seemed appropriate.
  • Lumiere—He’s Disney’s most famous monopod. (Well, other than Ariel). So I’ve always wanted to try this costume. And as you probably know, there’s a live-action Beauty and the Beast coming out next year. It’s unclear from the photos I’ve seen if Lumiere will still be a hopping monopod or if the new Lumiere (played by Ewan McGregor) will have bipedal locomotion. If the new movie changes the way we imagine Lumiere, this could be the final Halloween in which I could dress like him. So it had to be Lumiere in 2016.

Can I share your costumes on my blog/Twitter/lower back tattoo/etc?

Yes, please do. Halloween is the one day each year when I actually encourage people to stare at me.

All I request is that if you post my images, you link to my website: http://www.JoshSundquist.com/motivational-speaker.html

I would also like to be polite and helpful by tagging you on social media. What’s your username?

Thanks. Typing “@JoshSundquist” should find me on any platform, but for your convenience here are URLs to my profiles:

Can I also post your videos on my blog, play them on my television show, or show them to my co-workers?

You are officially granted permission to share or broadcast or quote anything from this post, my website, or any my videos. You don’t need to contact me for permission. Again, I only ask for attribution and a link to my website.

Have you always felt comfortable with how you look as an amputee?

I used to be pretty self-conscious. In high school I wore a prosthesis all the time and didn’t want anyone to find out I was missing a leg. But now I’m more at ease with who I am and what I look like, and I guess with these Halloween costumes you could even say that I celebrate what makes me different. Which may be either weird or refreshing, depending on your perspective.

Have you considered dressing as _____ (a shark attack victim, a pirate with a peg-leg, The Black Knight in Monty Python, The Steadfast Tin Soldier)?

Here’s the thing. Those are all fun costume ideas, but I don’t want to dress as an amputee. I’m already an amputee 364 days per year. I don’t need a costume for that. Halloween is the day I can be something else. I look for costume ideas that represent a creative twist on my situation, ideally something only I am able to dress as because of the unique shape of my body.

What happened to 2011?

We don’t talk about 2011.

No, really. What happened?

WE DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. (But I will sort of answer this in the next question.)

How did you get started with these costumes?

The 2010 gingerbread man was just a costume I thought would be fun to wear to a party with my friends. I posted it on Facebook, but image sharing wasn’t such a big thing online back then. The next year, in 2011, my costume was not any kind of twist on being an amputee, which is why I don’t include it in my collages. (Also, it was terrible.) But in 2012 when I did the leg lamp, a friend of a friend posted the photo on Reddit and it hit the front page. Then people went back and found my gingerbread costume and put them together. So I was like, OK, I guess this is a thing now.

How do you make these costumes?

They are a joint-taskforce creation between my assistant Lisa and me. We toss around ideas for a few months about different costumes and how they could be constructed. She does all the heavy-crafting. She’s a licensed carpenter, among many other talents. They are built primarily from materials purchased at craft-supply stores and they take weeks of trial and error to construct. (Here’s how she made Lumiere.)

Was Halloween a big thing in your family growing up?

No, for religious reasons my family didn’t celebrate it at all. We’d literally lock all the doors and turn the lights off so people would think we weren’t home and wouldn’t come trick-or-treating. I didn’t dress up for Halloween for the first time until I went to college. So it’s a funny twist of life that my Halloween costumes will probably be the most visible thing I ever do. Like, no matter how many motivational speeches I give or books I write or YouTube videos I upload, it’s unlikely they’ll reach a fraction of the amount of people who have seen my costumes in the past few years.

Please update me on what’s happened since I last visited your website, which was exactly one year ago when you posted your last costume.

Well, thanks returning for our annual reunion.

Some life milestones since last Halloween:

Speaking of Ashley, what is she dressing as?

Belle.

Why not Babette, feather duster that Lumiere has a crush on?

She prefers to dress as a princess rather than a maid. Go figure.

Is the foosball costume mobile?

Yes, unlike my increasingly outdated website, it has a mobile-friendly version.

How did you float in the air in your foosball costume photo?

Check out this video about the costume.

How long can you balance in the flamingo pose?

Only long enough to take a picture or kick a soccer ball.

Did IHOP pay you to wear their sign?

No. But if they want to reimburse me for the materials we purchased last year to make the costume, I accept Venmo or PayPal.

Can I have high-res photos for my print publication, answers to questions that aren’t posted here, etc?

Please email my assistant Lisa@JoshSundquist.com if you need anything else.

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