This Ain't No Puppet Show!

Earlier today, my dad asked me if I would like to come along with him to my niece Kylee's marionette show at her elementary school. That's right - a marionette show.

(Insert the theme from the movie Halloween here.)

If any of you happen to recall reading my "Kindertrauma" post on October 20 of last year, you will recall that marionettes freaked me out as a kid and still creep me out quite a bit today. Initially, I told him that I wouldn't go. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that going to the show would be a good opportunity for me to face one of my fears.

Mrs. Anderson's fifth-grade class at Samuel Morgan Elementary School in Kaysville actually put on a decent program. They presented various snippets into the lives of famous Americans of the past and present, putting them into fictional situations - for example, I'm relatively sure that Bill Gates and Eli Whitney were not really roommates at Yale - to show what they had learned about these people and their accomplishments. I particularly enjoyed the segment featuring Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Amelia Earhart landing on the moon together.

Miraculously, I did not suffer any panic attacks nor did I bolt out of the room in tears. The only time I went out into the hall, as a matter of fact, was to take a turn watching Kylee's one-year-old little brother Jackson, who wandered into several classrooms and also ran down the hallway after the members of one class were let out for recess, following the excitement.