Mr. Potato-Head Famine

Scene:  It's morning.  The kids are downstairs, doing the breakfast thing.  Alledgedly.

I'm upstairs.  Drying my hair.  With my fancy working hair dryer.

Lilly comes stumbling upstairs (because she is so excited and tall that apparently stumbling is her default mode of transportation).

"Mom?"

"What, Lilly?"

"Mom?  May we have a potato?"

"What? Why?  Is this the Depression?  Are we Oliver Twist?"

Lilly, choosing to ignore my unnecessary commentary, answers, "So we can eat it."

"No, Lilly, you can't really just eat a potato.  That's weird.  It wouldn't taste good."

Then, a voice hisses from downstairs, "No!  Lilly, we want it to make a Mr. Potato Head."

"Oh!  Mom!  We're going to make a Mr. Potato Head!"

HA!  It's like my children ARE living in the Depression!  With their homemade Mr. Potato Heads.  Maybe they can get some corn husk dolls and an orange for Christmas.

Except the playroom suggests that we do, in fact, have actual toys - made of real plastic!

Though, point taken, I have not shelled out for a Mr. Potato Head.  It violates my cardinal rule of play things: They Must Not Have Pieces.

So I told them they could have a potato.  And they stuck old screws and nails in it to make a face.

It was the most adorably hideous and terrifying thing ever.  Like Edward Scissor Hands meets Jason meets . . . well . . . Mr. Potato Head.