Tuberous

**originally posted in 2007**

One of the tools Ashley uses during her speech therapy sessions is a Mr. Potato Head toy. With all his different, colorful body parts, the opportunities for both receptive and expressive language are many. However, Ashley had her own agenda in last week’s therapy session with Mr. Potato Head.

Instead of putting Mr. P. together in the traditional fashion – you know, eyes where eyes are supposed to go, arms coming out of the side of his ‘body’, feet on the bottom, mouth on the lower front, etc., all Ashley wanted to do was stick different sets of eyes in every hole on the brown spud. She wanted no parts of arms, legs, hats, mouths, ears or mustaches. It was eyes everywhere.

Sometimes trying to figure out how her creative mind works is difficult. By channeling Mr. Potato Head into a vegetable with many eyes, was she making a statement about her own vision impairments? (For new reader, Ashley is totally blind in her left eye, and her clinical vision measurement in her right eye is 20/2000. She can focus at about an inch in front of that eye.) Does she wish she could stick in some more eyes – eyes which would help her see better? Or was she just making a joke – you know about potatoes having “eyes”? Either scenario is quite possible with Ash.

All the talk about Mr. Potato Head did make me start to look around the Internet to see if I could purchase just eyes for him. While I didn’t find anyone who was selling just the eyes, I found lots and lots of different accessory kits for the dapper spud, and I learned a lot about Mr. P’s life.

Did you know Mr. Potato Head has his own website? Check it out and find out everything you ever wanted to know about his origins. Also, Mr. Potato Head was the first toy ever advertised on TV – I didn’t know that. Mr. Potato Head has also been a drug smuggler, a racist statue, a balloon in a parade and the subject of a comic strip, and is the star of many YouTube videos. Here is just one…. And finally, I found a really good joke about the tuber:

Why is Mr. Potato Head the perfect man?

He’s tan, he’s cute and if he looks at another woman, you can rearrange his face

And here I was thinking Mr. Potato Head was JUST a toy…