Hand Puppets

He's only smiling because he wants to take your hand to a sick place. He's sick.

If there’s anything that I need to tell you it’s this: hand puppets are a disease.  Not only do they scare the bejesus out of little kids and animals, they are gross.  From the cheery sentiments of Mr. Roger’s, Daniel Tiger, to South Park’s, Mr. Hat, hand puppets are a sick attraction.  Who wants to watch as a grown man or woman grotesquely shoves his or her hand or hands into the inner workings of the representation of a cute animal?  Not me; I’d rather just have the real animal.  In Lamb Chop’s case, I want to eat lamb; not watch Sherry Lewis stick her filthy mitts all up in it.

 

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I explain my angst, for it is a story in which I know all too well.  This story is one of a small, 20-year-old boy who is curious about his body and eager to explore.  He unknowingly took his pleasurable show-and-tell outdoors.  His exploits were deemed deceitful and gross in the public’s eye.  He became known as a masturbation artist, a shank scraper, a pee-board artist or dick wrestler, a ding donger, a jerk-off, a cock-a-rub-a-do, and a stay-at-home dad.  He was terrorized by the ridicule.  He escaped to his home.  In a purge of suppressed memories, he remembered a time when, during his parents divorce, he was asked by his therapist to role play with hand puppets.  These furry representations of his parents relived all of the pain he had wished to dismiss from his parents tumultuous relationship.   The boy, now older, was distraught that his penis had become his makeshift hand puppet.  Bereft of hope, he was only barely able to finish masturbating with his tears.

Hand puppets account for over six percent of hand accessories in the US and its crooked North American cousin, Canada.  Hand puppets are half as cute and twice as deadly as hand puppies.  Users beware: hand puppets are awful things.  They are dreadful and weird.  Please heed caution in your future encounters with these monsters or else you, yes you, might end up alone in your house masturbating.