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I won't pretend to have any idea how difficult it is to get many small children to wear fancy clothing to a wedding or a funeral (I personally loved it, and you couldn't get me out of it), but I dare any parent to attempt to get their child to dress like a 17th-century colonist every other day. I wore historical period dress three to four times per week as a kid, and it was quite the experience.

First off, we had our own costume department through which all of the clothing was handmade. A ton of time and money went into it. I remember women's corsets having a two-year waiting period because they all had to be custom-made. As children, we had a file documenting our measurements and growth. because puberty is a costume designer's worst nightmare. So, yeah, my parents had to keep a bunch of costumers in the loop as I grew up.

Harvey Barrison/Wiki Commons

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Nothing eases the humiliation of puberty like sharing your measurements with a glaring seamstress.

All of this was so that we could walk around acting like old-timey kids, turning us into unpaid performers (which absolutely seems like it's in violation of a bunch of child labor laws). For example, the museum would often put out exciting games for us such as lawn bowling, just so tourists could point at me and my friends and say, "Oooohhh, look at the time children!" and get their children to come play with us. The colonial higher-ups would bribe us with candy to play with tourist children for three hours at a time, but, sweet mother of Pocahontas, we were never bored. The tourist kids would play with us for a couple minutes before asking us where the gift shop was so that they could have their parents buy them their very own wooden toys to take home.