Friday, October 28, 2011

Flamingo's Magic Kingdom


Okay then, no magazines. Nobody wants to hear about them, so I won’t utter the word again in this post. I do have something interesting to talk about, but I’m in a Friday frame of mind which means I want to play more than I want to work. As it turns out, my buddy, Sunday Morning Joe, whom I haven’t mentioned in a while, provided me with a ticket to endless amusement yesterday. It seems that he and a neighbor who lives behind him share a small bit of woods. Rarely do they see one another, but they keep in constant communication via an old rusty mailbox conveniently located in – the woods! Don’t laugh because sometimes there’s even cookies involved. There’s a lot of other stuff in the woods too– a clock (which actually works) nailed to a tree, a bag for collecting the neighbor’s dog’s lost tennis balls (nailed to the tree), and a very old sign that stands NEXT to the tree bearing a secret word that I dare not utter for fear of unleashing mystical and dangerous powers. Presiding over this hidden kingdom stands a tall formidable pink plastic flamingo.

Now this is not any ordinary flamingo. This flamingo is so special that her name (yes, it has been determined that she’s a girl) is Flamingo. That’s right – the one and ONLY Flamingo. Lest you think she’s just a cheap pink floozie, think again – Flamingo just returned from a trip to Australia. Yes, she really did.  And you know what THATcosts these days. The downside is that now that she’s seen Sydney it’s hard to keep her back in the woods. So Sunday Morning Joe and his neighbor decided to send her on virtual trips. You’d think, jet-setter that she is, she’d consider this second rate, but Flamingo is a bird blessed with a quirky sense of humor. She stands back there next to the sign with the perilous word on it laughing her beak off as real snail mail postcards from HER volley across the miles to Sunday Morning Joe and the neighbor  from all over the world. SMJ just got one from Oman. This is arranged of course through the aid of a network of secret agents (one of whom is now officially me) which means that SMJ and his neighbor don't get the same ones. His operatives send to her, hers send to him.

Of course the obvious problem with me being an operative is that I rarely get to Oman anymore, though I AM going to Dayton in a couple weeks which could be good, but, sadly, that’s the full extent of my foreseeable exotic travel. SO after thinking hard on this deficit I realized that I could actually outdo those frequent fliers thanks to something I have up my bookseller sleeve that these other agents lack – a stack of vintage post cards from all over the world! What this means is that now Flamingo no longer must confine herself to real time travel. She can TIME TRAVEL. Every Friday she will send a card to Sunday Morning Joe’s neighbor with updates on bygone events. The first one, from 1940’s Hawaii, left this morning. You’ll note that Flamingo realized she’d need proof of her abilities to zoom back in time so, as you can see from the photo above, she made sure I included pictures of her in action. So far she's strolled beneath the palm trees in 1947 Hawaii, led the Victory Parade in Paris on July 14, 1919, and hung out at an English castle with some boring Edwardian ladies in big hats.

I must confess though that fun as this has been, a wave of pure envy crashed over me this morning as I stood at the patio doors surveying my own little  kingdom. I have a lake, trees, a stone path, and even a slice of cemetery. But, alas and alack, no flamingo, no mailbox, no clock and no sign with a dangerous word on it. Not even any cookies. For a moment I pondered where one might buy a pink plastic flamingo when suddenly two deer, one enormous, loped around the headstones from afar and sprinted into the yard. The male of course tucked right into his breakfast of green ivy sprinkled with raindrops, but the female stopped dead in her tracks and looked me straight in the eye.

“Okay,” she said, in a rather aggressive tone. “Here’s the deal. You can have a Wal-Mart flamingo, or you can have me. This yard’s not big enough for both of us.”

Well, when you put it like that … okay then. I’ll just play with the postcards.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This was delightful~ I love the pink flamingos and the time travel. Some truly creative neighbors you have.

tess said...

Creative they are, but they're not MY neighbors -- I could only wish, though mine are good in a different way. They live in Massachusetts. SundayMmorning Joe is my friend who started out as my customer.