COME ON AND PULL MY STRING (I'm your puppet)

As many of you know, or will come to find out, I love the Muppets. I love puppetry. I think it is an awesome art form. When I was younger, I built my own puppets and put on shows for the public library during the summer. I would do fairy tales or make it up as I went along. (That is usually when things would fall apart...)

Today's bit of funny is one of these experiences.

I think I was maybe in 6th grade. It was the summer around July 4th. I decided to have a puppet show that was like a parade and throw candy and streamers and all sorts. It really had no point what so ever. I had some other kids my age help me and we all thought this would be a ball, and the children at the library would love it. That was before they turned on us.

We had the puppets up, and making like they were building a float of some sort. I think it just looked like one giant Hefty bag. I knocked it with a hammer "building" and knocked the whole thing down that we were behind. WOOPS! The kids saw us and everything that goes on behind a puppet show. It scared some. I know this, because some started yelling for their mothers. Someone quickly grabbed it and stood it back up, and away we went. We threw the candy. The puppets themselves couldn't do this so a random human hand would pop up and throw things. I am sure it looked weird. This is the moment we lost control. Those little kids went nuts! Diving and dodging and pushing and pulling, yelling and screaming--a riot had broke out! I swear they were climbing the walls and on the ceiling, even! The sweet librarians tried to get them to calm down, but it was just over. The running of the bulls was calmer and less dangerous than what had just broke out!!

Following this we started to throw streams of crape paper out into the riots and told them it was fireworks. What a stupid thing. It looked like we were toilet papering a massacre!! We even had to have the puppets ask them to calm down and throw the reams of crape paper back. 50 kids turned and laughed at us. They had taken over the library! Parents couldn't get ahold of them, the librarians couldn't grab them and keep them in the big room the puppet show was in. Chaos everywhere! Finally we just ended it and grabbed cattle prods and rounded them up. Ok, maybe not cattle prods, but almost! I don't even think we could have hosed them down.

An hour later the children had left and the room was in shambles. Paper everywhere. Candy everywhere. Some half-eaten, some out of wrappers and melted to the carpet. The librarians looked at me and said something like "hmmm..... this one, not so good." We cleaned up, helped rebuild some of the torn down library, and went home. This was a turning point in my career. I had become afraid of groups of children. I had also become afraid of librarians. When they say, "be quiet in the library," they really really mean it!!