hang the gnomie

sometimes i think i give the impression that i teeter on the edge of being a half-crazed, angry lunatic bitch in my posts. this is only half-true. i can manage to get my shit together some of the time. but to truly understand how i came to be this angry, you gotta understand the genetics and nurturing behind what has created me -- you need to meet my family.

there's no better time to realize how they fcuked you up than during the holidays.

this year, the running family joke includes theft, a pimp, gnomes, threats of bodily harm, and a che guevera-like call for revolution. no, i'm not making this shit up, unfortunately. we're talkin' about pimpy, the stolen lawn gnome.

pimpy lived a happy life on someone's lawn until a few summers ago when my cousin decided he would like living with her at her house better. yup, she stole him. (as teenagers on a dare are wont to do.) pimpy didn't complain and grew to like his new digs. he even looked forward to heading off to live with my cousin in her new college dorm room when the time came.

my uncle, on the other hand, had a different idea. he decided the pimpy would stay home with him and live out his days in the garden with the other garden gnomes my uncle started collecting on his own that no one seemed to notice. it was like he was building a little army of them out back. in some weird instance of foreshadowing, i now think that's exactly what he was doing.

a great battle did indeed take place when pimpy tried to leave for college. my cousin painted his fingernails, and then, pimpy himself pink in efforts to dissuade her father from dissimilating him with the other gnomes. pimpy stood in the bedroom window staring out from his prison, watching the other gnomes at play in the garden, now painted pink and long forgotten how a gnomie should live his life.

knowing that all of this strife was happening in my family as members took sides in whether or not pimpy should go away to college, what do i do?

that's right. i buy my uncle, the rabble-rousin', free pimpy-yelling bastard that he is ... a garden gnome, holding a cigar. my uncle's two greatest loves (besides my cousins) - cigars and now, garden gnomes combined in one present. this was a gift would surely top the 42" plasma tv santa brought him. fashizzle.

true, he did love his new gnome, this one named "ga-no-mee", very much. he carried him around like a baby for a while. eventually, though he put him outside to experience christmas with the other gnomes, around the miniature christmas tree, tastefully decorated with garland and bows that stood atop the patio furniture in the back yard. ringed with icicle lights and red fuzzy stockings that read freedom, pimpy lives and other inspiring messages of the season, the true christmas wonder lay in the fact that 20 garden gnomes were arranged looking at the tree. (again, i swear i'm not making this shit up. how could i?)

it was sad thing we did next. my uncle pissed us off at some point on christmas day. it may have been when he threw a roll of toilet paper into the gift bag holding my grandmother's christmas gift from my brother and myself.

or it could have been when he tried to fcuk up our secret pollyanna* we hold each year.

it could have been the combination of the two. but there were evil giggles from what happened next. we decided ganomee would suffer for my uncle's sins against us.

each of us played a role in it: one person swiped ganomee from the outside christmas gnome display, one person swiped the christmas lassos my aunt had hanging in the living room, while yet another person grabbed a camera. (the guilty shall all remain nameless.) we looped the lasso over poor ganomee's feet, pulling it tightly until he was secure and then secured the other end of the rope around the hitch on my uncle's SAV.

yup, we lynched a garden gnome. i'm sure they've seen stranger things than garden gnomes swinging from the back of a car in pennsyltucky.

the best part was the look of panic on his face - my uncle's, not ganomee, when he realized what happened. (ganomee's made of resin, remember? i'm not going to jail for abuse of plastic lawn ornament.)

he checked bags, he checked boxes of presents and handbags and purses but still couldn't find poor ganomee who lay curbside in the muck, still swinging by his feet from the hitch.

he panicked until he went to pull my mother's car closer to the house so she wouldn't get soaked in the damp, dreary rain that fell christmas day.

there in between the raindrops that glistened in the glow from the highbeams, he saw ganomee, just swinging in the rain.

*secret pollyanna: our secret pollyanna is similar to how other's work a pollyanna except in our case, the name we pick is the person who wraps our present to give to us. he or she wraps the present we buy ourselves. don't laugh, it's great!