Pablo Picasso's Puppet

Aunt Marge, my source for the world’s finest fruit cake, sent Captain Chaos a sock puppet kit for Christmas. The Captain pulled out the kit yesterday afternoon while the Boss took the boys to their karate tournament. We sat on the couch and made three sock puppets.

I made the first puppet for the Captain. Maybe it was the control freak inside of me, but I thought that if I modeled a sock puppet for her she’d have a better chance of creating a puppet that looked…oh, I don’t know…like it was made by someone who wasn’t wacked-out on cocaine?

The second sock puppet was a half-Captain, half-dad project. She chose the adhesive-backed parts, peeled them off their plastic strips, and showed me where to press them into place.

Then I turned the final project completely over to her, and watched as she channeled Pablo Picasso and built her own sock puppet.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

It took me a moment to realize that when she made her puppet she was looking at the sock with the closed end on top, and built the face from the top to the bottom, starting with the eyes. That’s perfectly normal from her perspective. That’s how she sees a face. That’s how we all see a face.

 

She had no clue that in order to make the sock puppet speak she would have to build the puppet with the closed end of the sock on the bottom, and build up starting with the mouth.

The only thing keeping me from wishing that I had let her build all three puppets completely alone is the therapy bills.  What a puppet show that would have made!