MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin

Not only is the kid kewl... major props to his Dad for letting him do all that. His boy will forever remember that, and probably taught him the best lessons about life.

May I? Can I talk here?

Dude, that TOTALLY almost brought me to tears... because wow did that remind me of when I was Caine's age... and did that with a puppet theater.

I LOVED puppets, had like twenty of them (most of them I still have), some i made, some I bought... and my dream was to be a puppeteer. I took an giant old greeting card display case from my Mom and started cutting it up into a puppet theater... and over time my Mom made me curtains that opened and closed like a real stage, and my Dad helped me wire up stage lights, and switches, and my older brother helped me wire up speakers to an old cassette player for sound effects. I painted this thing myself, and decorated it with trim I pulled off of old cabinets and furniture at the local dump... and I would hold puppet shows all the time, with a carboard box sign at the road inviting in strangers that drove by. Never had a customer, until my Dad made a flier that he ran off at work for me (back then zerox machines were rare and copes were made by a print press). I ran them around the neighborhood, taped them to street poles and whatnot. Come the next day... time for the show... I had set out about 10 folding chairs in case anyone showed up... and the basement was standing room only, with a luck few sitting on the stairs, I mean it was PACKED... my parents had to turn people away because they just simply couldn't fit any more people in the basement... which was a big Michigan basement the size of the house's footprint.

I put on a show about Frankenstein that lasted about 20 minutes following a script I found in a costume shop (which I also still have)... I made costumes for my puppets and everything.

It was awesome, and I'll never forget how cool that was to be a kid and have a huge enthusiastic audience cheering and clapping when the curtain went down. And everyone started shouting encore encore... so I opened up the curtain and adlibbed material for another ten minutes or so.

Well, I grew up... and I'm not a puppeteer... but for that day... I was.

And Caine, well, he may never own a real arcade... but on that day... he did. Caine's Dad is the shiznit, and so is the guy who organized the flash mob. Kudos to them.