WASHINGTON —If you’re driving in Northern Virginia and see Spider-Man or Doc the Dwarf from “Snow White” at a bus stop — know that it’s a mom sending a message.
Julie Mudrick dresses up in a costume every school day in October to pick her kids up from the bus stop. Mudrick has dressed as everyone from Abraham Lincoln to the grandpa from the movie “Up.” The kids on the bus even sang the theme from Batman the day she showed up as the caped crusader, she writes on her blog.
She also chronicles her creative costuming on Instagram.
The mother of five said she started all of this to show her shy son, who was a third-grader when all this began, that it is OK to stand out and be different.
“He was just so worried about life, had to be perfect in everything, was worried about what other people thought of him, just really taking life seriously,” Mudrick said. “I just thought, ‘You’re only 8, and I don’t want you to live your life like that.'”
So one time, when she happened to be at the store with her kids, she picked up some funny glasses that make your eyes bigger and a clown nose — and wore them to her kids’ bus stop.
“My kids kind of came off the bus and rolled their eyes, and kind of laughed at mom because mom does stuff like that,” she said. “And then I just thought. You know what? I’m going to dress like this every day in October. I just thought it’d be fun.”
Mudrick said her son is still relatively quiet, but he has fun. “He is not so worried about what other people think,” she said.
In fact, he told her that he plans to dress up with his mom when he enters middle school next year.
“For him to be able to say that–I thought that’s great,” Mudrick said.
Now she’s inspired other moms from Illinois to Texas to Arizona, who are using the hashtag #busstopcostumes. Mudrick says she’s going to keep it up in order to teach her kids and others that we are here to have joy.
WTOP’s Liz Anderson contributed to this report.
