Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies

I was a strange kid. I had an overactive imagination and was immature for my age. At about 12 (when most normal girls are reading Judy Blume books and dreaming of making out with boys) I would send away for ventriloquist dummies with proof of purchase seals. I always wanted to be a puppet master. I was allowed to pick out one Pelham puppet for my birthday or Xmas every year as a gift from my Nana and Papa. The Pelham puppets were imported from Germany or somewhere where craft was not dead. I had many different characters but my all time favorite was the hobbly horse followed by the fairie ballerina. In the fifth grade talent show I rode to school on the bus with my puppets...and a Tchaikovsky cassette tape. Most other girls in my class were performing in a dance number by Billy Joel. When I arrived at school I discovered to my horror that the performing puppet strings were tangled in a messy web. I called my mother crying and she drove to the school and tried to calm me down and untangle. When she couldn't fix them she asked me if she could cut them and restring them. I reluctantly let her...and they remain that way today. I was obsessed as a kid with the Pelham catalog. All the interesting clothing and painted wooden faces on the pages. I wonder if kids would be different today if they were encouraged to play with a puppet instead of video games?
Anyway I suggest you make a sock puppet today or a paper lunch bag one and then watch the movie DUMMY by Greg Pritikin and get inspired.