Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2015 13:11:09 -0500
From: “N.A. Booko”
Subject: Hand holding an egg . .
Several years ago, I bought two female manikins at the thrift store. I did not need a manikin. Nor did I need two manikins. They were from the heyday of manikin making in the 1950s. All of them were perfect. Perfect cheekbones, eyes, mouth and hair. Perfect hands, fingers and fingernails. Perfect waist, perfect legs. They posed perfect in department store windows.
The arms and hands could be taken apart for ease of dressing. The body could be separated at the waist. Unless you are a professional manikin dresser, doing so can be very stressful and brings forth some very colorful verbal comments. There is nothing quite so ridged as an uncooperative rigid manikin. I have owned mine for fifteen years and never really found a use for either. They are stored in my junk building. Over the years, the arms, hands have become separated from the torsos. Grappling and pawing thru junk to find other junk sometimes reveals a manikin hand or arm in the strangest place.
Finally, about a year ago, two hands turned up on the same day- I decided it was time to try and put them all back together. So, I placed the hands in somewhere i would see them every day. Several months later, I was in Habitat and was just in time to see a friend buying a pair of manikin hands, just like mine. “I have no idea what I am going to do with them” she exclaimed. “I just like them.”
Some time later, I saw her again and inquired as to what she had done with the ‘hands’- “Right now” she said “they are on my dining room table, each holding an egg.” I thought to myself- how peculiar.
A few days after that, while searching my junk room for something, I unearthed two antique milk glass eggs- the type that was placed in a hen’s nest to encourage motherhood. My first thought- Place the eggs in the manikin hand for that special ‘decorator look’- I did. It looked like an old manikin hand holding an old milk glass egg. I was unimpressed.
One of these days, I’ll get the manikins together again – I will put the hands and arms in the ‘waving goodbye’ position . . holding a ‘For Sale’ sign . . .
N.A. Booko
N.A. Booko lives, writes in Chatham County and declares not all my submissions are window dressing . . .