Don’t Mess With My Henson

Did y’all notice the Google search page this weekend? It was to celebrate Jim Henson’s birthday. He would have been 75. That is not so old - it is a shame because he really could have had a least another decade of puppet-making.

In true form, I can‘t help but relate everything I encounter online or in my daily routine, to my travels in Mississippi. Mississippi applies to everything, everyone, and every situation and maybe that is the direction this blog will take in the future.

Seeing all of the Henson stuff reminded me of B and I stopping at the Jim Henson Delta Boyhood Exhibit in his hometown of Leland, Mississippi.  You can imagine how much traffic they get (not much), so when we showed up on hot, late summer day the woman working the information counter/sign-in book/tour guide stand was stoked to see us. So stoked she told us about her son and his girlfriend who might make a good wife but she wasn’t sure but they are so in love and he is in the army and they see each other on Tuesdays and Fridays and and and oh my lands! It was so distracting that we didn’t notice another older woman lurking near the original Kermit replica. So when the museum woman finally got around to showing us the actual museum, we were startled when the older gal started heckling her.

“Now this is the original puppet that Mr. Henson…..”

“THAT’S not the original O-R-I-G-I-N-A-L, I have a picture of one from the Smithsonian…”

“Well technically there are several….”

“Not this one.”

“We -

“Nope.”

And so on and so on – you got the feeling that this was either a mother and daughter situation or an old Leland rivalry between the two gals up for the one Jim Henson Museum job because the woman trying to show us around was clearly trying to ignore the heckler and since there was only four people in the room it was quite, uh – uncomfortable.

I think if Jim would have been there he would have made a couple puppet characters based on the ladies. Kind of like a cross between Janice, Miss Piggy, and those movie critic dudes – called Museum Rivals. It was that bizzaro.