Having a woodshop elevates your position as a grandpa with your grand kids, especially the boy grand kids.
Just think what my grandson (we’ll call him C) thinks about me after making him this puppet theater. He thinks I am a neat old man!……and wow, all those tools! (the male grand kids have that man-thing about tools, also).
They like to putter in my woodshop which excites me because I know they will eventually grow up to be big putterers and maybe inherit my tools.
The girl grand kids pop their head into my shop and then disappear. They hate the sawdust, a trait that will remain with them for the rest of their life as noted in my original blog posting. By the way, the colors on the puppet theater are C’s choice.
His mother always lets her boys make these kind of choices which can’t do harm to the family or the child. I admire her for that. She realizes it’s more important for C to learn to decide for himself than force her own colors choices on him that will never match her decor. Now I call this blog, Puppet Wars, because I knew that the puppet theater would be a stage for wars.
What would you expect after your grandsons, E, T, and C have watched so many Star Wars episodes. Well, I was right! The first melodrama on the new stage ended in a puppet war…..a pretty good one at that! T orchestrates the melodrama.
However, it quickly turns to a battle field and C, my youngest grandson wins. C always wins. My other grandsons, E and T, have learned very quickly that you don’t want to upset General C. A upset general can make life pretty miserable for the rest of the battalion. I am sure General C has read a book on the life of General Patton, if not in this life in the previous one. At first battle’s end, C’s puppet stage has the marks of the battle which I had to take off the front lines and fix. All and all, it survived things pretty well. Remarkably, this puppet theater has opened new doors to the creativity and spontaneity of my grandsons.
They “make believe” and I’ve learned in life that it’s okay to “make believe” as long as you come back to the realities of life and enjoy the journey. Oh, how grand daughters and grand sons help brighten the journey!
