talking "through" a doll

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I have a stuffed owl that has his own distinct personality and that talks with his own voice, although his appearances aren't as common as they were when I was a kid. He has an elaborate back story, coming from another world, and I even made up some words in his native language that my family still use to this day. I also wrote a lot of stories about him as a kid. I never "talked through him" though as a substitute for talking myself, when he "talks," it is because I mean for him to say something himself (if that makes sense).

Wow, the situation is so interesting that all you need now is some big traumatic disaster to happen (e.g. someone grabs Puppetrina from you and rips her head off), you go crazy for a while, and then slowly recover and find a way of talking without her, and voila, there's a movie plot which you could sell to some Hollywood producer!

Of course if you want to sell it on the art circuit, it would be better if Puppetrina were rersurrected after the decapitation and rebuilt by a mute ventroloquist whose own puppet, Archie, then falls in love with Puppetrina while she is in recovery; and the only way in which things can work out for the relationship between the puppets is for you and the ventreloquist to get married. (I kind of like that outcome better, but I guess I am weird.)

OK, I got seriously off-topic there. What I wanted to say was that I think this is simply an unusual version of the preference that most Aspies have, to communicate within a medium that shields them from relationship complexities and confusing social signals that cause stress. Many Aspies prefer Internet communication to face-to-face communication, because it reduces the amount of information which they are required to interpret to a single data channel. I am fairly good at reading non-verbal signals -- almost as good as most neurotypical people, I would say -- but not in every situation, and absolutely not when I am stressed. There have been times (even at work) where I have struggled to cope with facial expressions, body language, the memory of past experiences and unresolved conflict with the same people, tone of voice, the fact that there are four stressed people at the table, interruptions and phone calls, not to mention actual sensory overload (I have hyperacusis at the moment), and I have unwittingly put my fingers into my ears and closed my eyes whilst saying my bit in the meeting.

On top of all that, many Aspies are emotionally extremely sensitive. (In fact, in my experience, even those who appear to be emotionally "thick-skinned" have put up an emotional shield, but are nevertheless pretty sensitive behind it all.) Being so sensitive, then, it makes sense that such a person would want to be at a safe emotional distance whilst nevertheless craving interpersonal affirmation.

Kamran Nazeer has written a book about 4 people that he went to school with. This was a special school for autistic children in New York, and both the writer and the other 4 people have autism. The book is called "Send in the idiots". Andre is one of the autistic people in this book. He is a computer scientist and he uses puppets to communicate.

Tell me a toy topic

I did this all the time as a kid.

I now make my pets talk to me. I give them a voice, a story, and my kids have always loved it.

What does it mean to talk through a doll?

Ummm....

sorta like this...She has her own personality...completely different from mine...and I know it is mostly pretend, but I do also use her to convey "real life" information...and whatnot....sometimes....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyLRxSUpY4c[/youtube]

This has been going on ever since I found her...a few months ago...

Last edited by poopylungstuffing on 16 Sep 2009, 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

When I went to the sock monkey festival in Rockford Ill. One of my fellow monkey-makers who I knew from the internet talked half the time through her main/favorite monkey....I have a lot of sock creatures with their own names and personalities...but I never talk through them..

Excellent....It's a lot like Puppetrina...except...I have not had Puppetrina for nearly so long

I watched your video and what was quite fascinating was the way in which your friends were interacting with Puppetrina -- as though there were a real child along with them. It seems to have switched from a game to a normal situation for them. They were being patient with this little chatterbox all the time, and it didn't seemas though it took any effort from them to be patient, it was just normal.

I saw in your profile summary in the sidebar that you are a bartender. Ouch, isn't that a pretty stressful profession for an Aspie to have?

I couldn't watch the vid, but the OPs description of how her friends interacted with Puppetrina left me thinking what utterly cool people they were.

I am so green with envy...

I don't really talk through dolls or anything, but I used to talk a lot through fictional characters that I wrote stories about. All of them, however, had some characteristics in common with me. They were/are like "parts" of me (so much that some online acquaintances thought I had a dissociative disorder, which I don't have). I would seem very different when talking through those characters than my normal persona.

Thanks so much for posting the video, poopy. It was fabulous and made my day. Puppetrina is adorable!

mmm, couldn't get past the first few seconds. saying "cracker barrel" in a bitchy southern twang didn't do much to hold my attention.

I just call it discussion forum userID.

Puppetrina isn't a child..she's older than all of us..she was born in 1963...but plastic doesn't really age...but we keep her real age though...She is sort of ageless...but definitely not a child...

Sometimes my friends are more patient with Puppetrina than they are with me...Especially my good friend who is her on again off again "boyfriend"....It is almost hard to remember what our relationship was like before Puppetrina...and difficult for us to fathom what it would be like if we didn't have her around...Even though we have only had her for a few months. He is very ASish person and Puppetrina acts as sort of a buffer on the stress of "Normal" social interraction. I think that before Puppetrina, he was more inclined to have meltdowns/shutowns and angrily storm home. Now he hangs out at the bar with Puppetrina....

I am an unconventional bartender..see....
I help run a performance and arts space....

Well, I'm a fan. The name Puppetrina is groovy beyond belief-- I really want to find the commercial for the doll from the 1960s. Puppetrina!

I find the kind of talking Puppetrina does in the video extremely charming and relaxing. I sometimes talk in a similarly childlike way through my cats-- I would give them a stern lecture about civil rights if they demanded to go to Cracker Barrel, but I'd go to dinner with Puppetrina, even if it meant going there.

I fell right now like, even though most adults assume I have the sort of emotions they do, and I often do myself, my actual emotional life is much more childlike. I just pretend it isn't. I can see the appeal of device that acknowledges that I am always carrying a child with me.