Being a Puppeteer Really Socks Sometimes

Dearest Anthony,

It is with a heavy heart that I compose this letter. When you return from your stint with the touring company, you will find me gone, and while we will always be brothers, I will no longer be welcome in our family’s house.

As you might suspect, father discovered my designs. He left for the park to perform his troupe. It was a production of Twelfth Knight, and while he had mentioned that it had been adapted for sock puppets, he made no indication that such modifications involved a shortening of runtime. Thus, I thought I would have nearly three hours of uninterrupted work time. When he arrived home just forty-five minutes later, he found me hard at work on my makeshift drawing table.

Now, I know what you are thinking: why did I not simply lie? You instructed me to do just that when I first confided in you about the designs. But Anthony, I have been lying all my life. I attended L’Academie Royale De L’Art Textile to study sock puppeteering at the age of fifteen. The instructors told me I could emote more with my wrists and palms than most classically trained thespians could with the whole of their bodies. I graduated at the top of my class and received invitations from several of the most renowned touring companies. I traveled the globe. By the age of seventeen, I had performed for two kings and six queens. But it was never what I wanted. I didn’t want to be a sock puppeteer like father and like all of our uncles, like grandfather before them, like you.

And I told father so. When he found me at my drawing table and asked what it was I was scribbling, I confessed everything: that the pretense under which I had returned home–to found my own sock puppet theater–was untrue; that I wanted no longer to act with socks but make my own socks, socks that, in their design alone, possessed as much vibrant life as could be instilled by a skilled sock puppeteer.

Father did not appreciate this, of course. He scoffed at my plans. He told me that out there, beyond the cardboard walls of a sock puppet theater, socks were not lauded but ridiculed. He said there was no such thing as a vibrant life-affirming sock out there. He said they were simple and drab, a mere treaty between foot and shoe.

Moreover, he said I have two options: I must either cast my designs into the fireplace and resume my pursuit of sock puppetry, or forever be banished from his house. As the opening this letter has surely confirmed, I have chosen the latter. I will be traveling far away from here, all the way to the Americas.

So, fare thee well, brother. While it is unlikely that our paths will cross again, perhaps someday you will be in clothing store and you will see a brand of exciting colorful socks with my name upon them and know I have lived my dream.

Yours,
Ezekiel