The Ox

I've known Warren a long time--a little over thirteen years--and he still amazes me with his ability to do just about anything. Last week was the boys' holiday program. Satchel was instructed to wear a black suit and red tie. Jiro was instructed to come dressed as an ox.

I wasted no time passing the costume making responsibilities to Warren. Honestly, a week ago I didn't really even know what an ox looked like.

We spent a Saturday afternoon shopping and Warren shared his ideas with me. He planned to dress Jiro in brown and construct some sort of headband with horns. Maybe put a bell around his neck. Sounded fine to me.

Then we went to eat Chinese food and Warren saw a picture of the ox on the Chinese zodiac. Inspired, we had a lively discussion about the jujus in Cameroon and the elaborate masks they would wear during village festivals.

Over the next few days I watched in awe as Warren turned a pile of styrofoam and faux animal fur into the most elaborate ox costume in the history of the school.

After all of his effort, I was really worried that Jiro, in typical toddler fashion, would refuse to wear it. Or that he somehow would destroy the mask in transit from our house to the show. Thankfully, I worried for nothing. Jiro happily wore his costume, followed his cues, and did everything he was supposed to do while keeping the mask intact. (And he looked SO FREAKING CUTE!)

Satchel, no slouch, was in 4 different numbers and just had a blast being up on stage. He had a grin the size of Jiro's mask on his face the entire night. It was awesome. (Maybe someday I'll have the skillz to post some video footage for you viewing pleasure!)

In general, the program was just fantastic. I was really impressed by the variety of songs (all Memphis music) and the enthusiasm of the kids and teachers. It was held at the Memphis College of Art, which was a great venue, and it was catered by Tsunami! Not a bad way to spend the evening at all!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The only down side to all of this was the GINORMOUS mess that Warren made! Every single room in our house was covered in styrofoam bits or tiny pieces of fur or drops of glue or...you get the point. See that picture where he's paper maiche-ing? That's our bedroom!! And the part where he sculpts the styrofoam? Do you have any idea how tiny those bits are? It makes me twitchy just to think about it. They're everywhere! At one point he made last minute adjustments in the bathtub! And thanks to the winter weather and static cling, I'm still finding tiny styrofoam bits clinging to random pieces of furniture!