My high school had a volunteer program with a local children’s home, and periodically we would throw holiday parties and carnivals. For some reason I was usually working the craft table and we always had the kids make sock puppets. It wasn’t that anyone was under the illusion sock puppets were especially fun, and after the first few, the kids could hardly have wanted more, because it was always the same group of kids. But one of my schoolmate’s fathers had a line in sock manufacturing and donated them, and in the grand tradition of gift horses, we didn’t look these in their gaping, sock-puppet maws. We didn’t have very good glue; sometimes you could sort of get a clump of yarn “hair” to stick to the top of the sock, but more often than not the Elmer’s-stiffened skein would fall off immediately and somehow manage to adhere to the table or your fingers. Because the googly eyes were self-adhesive, they were the best accessory. So we would force them to take home dozens of glue-smeared socks festooned with the rolling eyes of maddened stallions, and that was the community service requirement, and I suppose college admissions people looked at that, and thought something, or would have were it not there.

Here are classic books with googly eyes on them.