by Steven Engelfried<\/p>\n
I made a rash purchase at our local Goodwill store the other day.\u00a0 <\/span>I bought a beaver puppet that I really have no use for, and that\u2019s not a good sign.\u00a0 <\/span>When you use puppets a lot, you have to watch yourself.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s so tempting to just buy every cool one you see.\u00a0 <\/span>They seem so fun at the time, but not all puppets are practical.\u00a0 <\/span>Or affordable.\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n When I first started telling stories with puppets, almost every new puppet I added was something I really needed.\u00a0 <\/span>I had to have a decent farm set, some zoo\/jungle guys, a cat, a dog, a mouse\u2026Plus a spider (for Anansi), a frog and a toad (for Frog and Toad), and an assortment of people.\u00a0 <\/span>But after a few years of adding new ones here and there, I had a pretty workable core collection.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I realized I had to be careful.\u00a0 <\/span>My new rule became \u201conly buy it with plans to try it.\u201d\u009d\u00a0 <\/span>Meaning I could purchase only puppets that I already planned to use in a specific story.\u00a0 <\/span>That got me a moose (for Morris and Boris), a snake (Crictor!), and a very cool mosquito (without which Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People\u2019s Ears<\/em> would just be impossible).\u00a0 <\/span>At that point I was ready to slow down.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019d still add a new one now and then, and gave fairly specific hints around birthdays, but I generally resisted temptation.\u00a0 <\/span>That amazing looking Llama that runs $40 or so?\u00a0 <\/span>No thanks, I don\u2019t have a good llama story and it\u2019s too big.\u00a0 <\/span>A fancy flamingo with a flexible neck?\u00a0 <\/span>Pretty, but not for me.\u00a0 <\/span>Things were under control.\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n Then I started joining my wife on weekly runs to the local Goodwill stores.\u00a0 <\/span>She\u2019s a serious bargain hunter, always on the lookout for baskets, tin containers, pants for our hard-to-fit-children, and the perfect rolltop desk for under $15.\u00a0 <\/span>She lives for the hunt.\u00a0 <\/span>I tag along sometimes and always drift over to the toys.\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019d think I\u2019d feel a little strange picking up animal after animal and discreetly feeling for a possible hole in the bottom, but our fellow shoppers are a non-judgmental bunch:\u00a0 <\/span>what happens around the Goodwill bins stays around the Goodwill bins.\u00a0 <\/span>Usually I find no puppets at all, but when I do, they\u2019re amazing bargains.\u00a0 <\/span>I got hooked when I spotted a giant frog in great condition ($45 online) for $3, and the chance of other exciting finds keeps me going back.<\/font><\/p>\n But now my own puppet bins, which take up a sizable portion of the laundry room, are getting a bit tight.\u00a0 <\/span>And I\u2019ve been coming home with\u00a0puppets I don\u2019t really need, like that beaver, which is a fine beaver, but really no better than the beaver I already have, and don\u2019t use that much anyway.\u00a0 <\/span>Or the large lion which was a terrific bargain, but exactly identical to the lion puppet I already had, and I don\u2019t see those two ever sharing the stage together.\u00a0 <\/span>So I\u2019ll probably re-donate those to the Goodwill and remind myself again that I don\u2019t need every <\/em>puppet in the world, and I especially don\u2019t need two <\/em>of every puppet.\u00a0 <\/span>But if someday I happen to spot just the right Ostrich puppet, with a scrunchable neck, I will not hesitate to snatch it up, knowing it will have a ready made role waiting for it as the star of How the Ostrich Got His Long Neck<\/em>. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" …And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been coming home with puppets I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really need, like that beaver, which is a fine beaver, but really no better than the beaver I already have, and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use that much anyway. Or the large lion which was a terrific bargain, but exactly identical to the lion puppet I already had, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see those two ever sharing the stage together. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}