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How did I end up like this one might ask…? I know this because I happen to be asking my self that very same question. One moment I was enjoying a sit under a dog wood tree, and in the blink of an eye I now find my self face down in a drainage ditch.
OOOHHH yuck… I think a used con… oh never mind I don’t want to even think about what may have just floated by and touched me.
I guess in order to find out how I got where I am, I must think back to where I have been… yes I know where it all started to go wrong. It all started with the Flamingo… bright pink with a fresh look about her. Not weathered like the rest of those that resided on the lawn. She was something to behold, but let me tell you good people to never judge a book by it cover… or its high gloss weather resistant paint for that matter. From the beginning she created a stir, the Canadian geese were the only ones that had been there longer than I because they were here when the owners moved into the house, and I was a house warming gift… the first one… I am Harry the gnome or so they think… I guess I have been called Harry for so long that I have gotten used to it. When I first came out of the big furnace at the factory and was painted by hand, I was given the name Bob… yeah I know Bob is no better than Harry but I’m just a gnome what do I care.
Now in my time here on Maple Street I have seen and heard a great deal of things… I have seen children grow up, and been the guest at many tea parties. I have been dressed up like Santa, a snowman, as well as a bunny, and a number of other things. I have been peed on by dogs and beaten up by weed eaters then only to be repaired with markers and any number of odd paints that never seem to stick. With the rise in popularity of the traveling gnome on TV and the Internet I have been stolen and returned 4 times… in those travels I have seen unspeakable things at college campuses as well as in the cars of people that truly amazed me when they were able to walk upright. But no matter how I end up missing somehow I always find my way back with a new scar or two to show for it.
Now when the Flamingo came it had been a long time before we had seen anything new added to the yard. The owners were getting up in their years and came out here less and less with each passing summer. But after a vacation they brought her back and added her to the yard. She was rather loud in color and did not really match anything else; she was the center of attention and an outcast all at once. Oh and was she ever snooty, but being the proper gentlegnome that I am and seeing the things I have, I decided to make her feel at home and welcome her into the fold. At night as the owners slept we would roam the yard and I would tell her of my adventures. It seems she was made only 3 seasons ago and most of her life was spent in a dark box until one day she was taken from the box and put on display where she sat for a very long time. After spending a season on the shelf she was purchased by our owners and brought home to live with all of us. She was young and full of spunk she was not afraid of the weather because she was weatherized and fade resistant… oh how the young think they are impervious.
Well we became friends quickly and to be honest had she not been a flamingo, and I a gnome, I may have fallen for her. But as we were so different I knew it would never work. At one point I told her that and she became angry, then decided that she would, to spite me, throw her self at one of the Canadian geese as a way to get back at me. Knowing full well that I knew how she felt about them. But she did so anyway, and one day as the storm clouds rolled in she was taunting one of the geese and telling him that even though he was older and wiser about the yard than she was that she just knew that he was to scared to venture toward the rising waters of the drainage ditch. Well not wanting to seem afraid and not knowing that she only truly wanted his place in the yard he ventured forth allowing the wind to loosen his metal fastening rod… rocking him self back and forth as all the rest of us looked on with horror and then the wind took him and hurtled him toward the rushing waters. I did not have time to think. So I just threw myself at him and instead of him hitting the water with a splash I bounced off of his hollow plastic belly and with a great splash I was sinking and being rushed away by the storm waters…
So now days later I am found here face down in the middle of the muck all because of the flamboyant flamingo and her greedy desire for attention… Beauty is truly only paint deep.
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