Guignol! Guignol! Guignol!

This afternoon after school, I took Kaitlyn to a traveling puppet show that had come to town. It’s the sort of thing nightmares are made of. Not for her. For me.

The show was Guignol and Winnie the Pooh. Guignol is a famous French puppet. Or character. Whatever. The show was in a tent set up in the big park in town. (Same park where the circus was last year.) We were second in line. Well, first, but a French family cut in front of us.

The seats inside the tent were set up so that the kids all sat in the first six or seven rows.. and the grown-ups sat behind them. Kaitlyn was perfectly fine not sitting with me. As a matter of fact, she refused to even sit right in front of me. Or even in the row in front of me. She sat three rows up and over a few seats. It didn’t matter to her that we didn’t know anyone there. She was being a big girl. Some of the other kids weren’t as thrilled at the idea of not sitting with mom. A few of them cried. One mom just kept putting her screaming child in his seat, then leaving the tent. His sister would stroke his head and call out for their mother. Eventually, she sat on the ground next to him and he shut up.

When the show finally started (a predictable 15 minutes late), the curtains opened and a single, fairly worn, puppet popped up on “stage.” The kids screamed with delight. And they screamed for pretty much the duration of the 50 minute show. I watched Kaitlyn. She joined in counting with the kids when instructed to do so, she yelled “oui! Oui!” at the puppet a few times. It took about 15 minutes before we actually saw Winnie the Pooh. His role in the story was that the bad guy (another character all the French kids knew) stole his honey pot. Oh, the humanity!

The highlight for her, though, was the intermission. She jumped up and said she wanted popcorn. Something I knew; she’d been telling me since we were standing outside the tent. At one point during the show, she turned around, caught my eye and mouthed the sentence “I want popcorn.” I reached over and gave her a 2 Euro coin and told her to go get herself some. I was pretty sure the kids would all return to their own seats, but that an adult would snag my prime seat the second I lifted my butt out of it. She managed to get her own popcorn. I wasn’t too worried, the word is the same in French. And she told me she said “s’il vous plait” when ordering. So she probably did better than the French kid behind her in line.

I had hesitated to take Kaitlyn to the show. It’s the first day back at school since vacation, so I’m sure she’s tired. I had no idea how long the show would last. That circus we went to was like two hours. And I’m really never too sure about going to a show that’s in French. That didn’t seem to really phase her. She laughed at the right times. She yelled at the right times. She ordered her own popcorn.

One Response to “Guignol! Guignol! Guignol!”

  1. D.A.D. says:

    That all sounds really positive…..Kaitlyn seems to be fitting in with the language based on circumstances. Mother and Brother at times didn’t want to be seen with Mom & Dad, so nothing new there. And buying food is a universal language. I wonder how the French would handle attending a Taliban convention, as they push their way in front of someone? Could be interesting……

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