The Rubber Faces Story #1
"Does she have to shoot up my nostrils like that?"
Maybe you’ve seen these little charmers, maybe they’re even common. Stick your fingers in their backs and you can direct their expressions and even make them “talk.” Well, bless the Internet, they're even on eBay, Rubber Face Finger Puppets, all four for $9.99 plus shipping.
Anyway, when I discovered them at a garage sale years ago, two of them going for ten cents each, they were a revelation.
These guys are coming home with me.
I have the one with the hat and the one that looks just like that gravelly voiced television actor who always plays a yelling boss -- you probably don’t know his name either. I LOVE these expressive, malleable little screamers and for awhile had to take them everywhere. Okay, for several years I had to take them everywhere. (Okay, okay, they’re on my desk right now ...)
And one of the first places I took them was along for an eighteen-hour car ride with an eventual ex ...
Now, by the time of this trip, I’d already ignored many major signs of impending relationship doom. (But as the rubber faces were to show, so would he.) The latest sign that our coupling was cursed revealed itself as we left our home city, then our state, and continued west: somehow my formerly fond and eager boyfriend grew more quiet with each passing mile. And by the second day, still driving, he had slipped somehow into an apparently aphasic state. And since we weren’t planning to come back for a couple of years, apparently I was headed for my own extended, midwestern Gaslight.
Hmph, I know a couple of guys who’d just love to talk to me ...
Now, to be clear, we can’t blame the rubber boys; the ex had begun shutting down long before they came out. But when they did, boy howdy. The three of us babbled and joked for hours, interrupted only by an occasional, ignored plea for silence from the frozen fourth at the wheel. Too bad it was the dark ages back then, or I could point you to some video to decide if it was really the nonstop hilarity I remember it to be.
I was surprised and even a little scared by the many voices, the multiple characters that flowed out of me, with their own stories and even agendas. This is what actors must feel like, I imagined, sometimes lost from themselves, ungrounded. Populated. It was a little unsettling and I never mentioned it. God knows what kind of reaction I’d have gotten back then; these days you’d just post it all to YouTube and watch for hits.
Of all that tragically irretrievable material, the funniest thing “we” did on that trip, again and again, was this: I’d sit in the passenger seat, facing forward with a bored expression, holding a rubber face to the side window and hiding my hand. As we passed other cars, the little man -- really hamming it up -- would appear to scream, “Help! Help! I’m being kidnapped! What’s the matter with you people?! Do something, help!” I could just catch the surprised looks from the people in those cars. Pure comic gold -- so “we” thought anyway.
So by the time we made it back two years later, eventual ex really had cause to hate the rubber faces, which (whom?) I kept hanging on tacks in the wall of our apartment (I’m an ace decorator).
One day we were leaving to visit my old college roommate and her own new eventual ex. We were meeting at the Catskill Game Farm, a capitulation to my lifelong penchant for feeding, petting and chatting up any and all available creatures. (As Bill Watterson’s Hobbes put it, “True happiness can only be found in the wanton indulgence of animals.”)
“Ah, I’ve got to take these!” I said, inspired, pulling the rubber faces off the wall for the trip.
“You are so STUPID,” said eventual ex. I forgive you if you’re siding with him.
Hmph. Into my bag they went. Where they stayed -- quietly and on their best behavior -- for the whole journey.
And when we arrived, as my former roommate and I ran toward each other -- both doing that giddy girl-reunion screeching thing in the parking lot of the Catskill Game Farm, both followed by subdued if not quite sullen eventual exes -- she had on her hands the EXACT SAME RUBBER FACES. As we’d not yet attained coherence, I reached into my bag to pull out my matching pair -- ta da! -- and together we reached new high notes over the veritably cosmic coincidence.
Eventual ex just shook his head. The rubber faces had won the day again.
Turned out that while they were waiting, my roommate bought them in the gift shop. “Kathy will love these,” she’d told her husband.
The Rubber Faces Story #2
I was driving alone one Sunday summer morning, sometime after the eventual ex became just ex. Stopped at a light, I found myself confronted by a little girl with long, tight braids. She was crammed in the backseat of the car ahead of me, which was full of big-hatted black women all dressed in their churchgoing best.
Leaning into the rear window, the little girl was scowling at me something fierce, so much so that I gasped at first. No one else in the car could see what she was doing, and there was nothing -- so it seemed -- that I could do about it. If the girl’s expression said anything, it was this: Smiling is futile, possibly dangerous.
Little did she know ...
Keeping my eyes on the girl and my face blank with a hint of shared despair, I reached slowly to the base of my steering wheel. From her vantage point, I never moved a muscle.
Suddenly, there they were: the rubber faces, screaming from the dashboard, seemingly independent of me. I never took my eyes off of hers or changed my doleful expression.
The little girl EXPLODED in laughter. Every hat in the car jumped to the ceiling, wheeling around in shock. She pointed and spluttered, trying to explain, but by then the rubber faces were back on their hidden perch.
As they drove off I finally smiled, and she did too.
Leaning into the rear window, the little girl was scowling at me something fierce, so much so that I gasped at first. No one else in the car could see what she was doing, and there was nothing -- so it seemed -- that I could do about it. If the girl’s expression said anything, it was this: Smiling is futile, possibly dangerous.
Little did she know ...
Keeping my eyes on the girl and my face blank with a hint of shared despair, I reached slowly to the base of my steering wheel. From her vantage point, I never moved a muscle.
Suddenly, there they were: the rubber faces, screaming from the dashboard, seemingly independent of me. I never took my eyes off of hers or changed my doleful expression.
The little girl EXPLODED in laughter. Every hat in the car jumped to the ceiling, wheeling around in shock. She pointed and spluttered, trying to explain, but by then the rubber faces were back on their hidden perch.
As they drove off I finally smiled, and she did too.
