The MNF group got together last week for our annual holiday dinner and white elephant gift exchange. Some lovely items made the rounds. For example, Ron and I went home with matching garden ornaments, which Kristin and Roger had decided to purge from their yard.
Actually, I went home with the pair. While Kris was distracted, we stashed both statues on the trunk. “This is perfect,” I said. “I can hide them in the shrubbery around the border of our property. It will be a game for visiting children: find the little Dutch kids.”
I posted the photo of us holding the statues at Get Rich Slowly in an article about frugal Christmas traditions. One commenter (‘peewee’) wrote:
My family is the manufacturer of those statues!! I am from the Netherlands and we are exporting those figures all over the world. The are wearing old dutch clothing from the 19th century. We also have the correponding windmills and Amsterdam houses.
On Saturday, Kris and I attended book group at Andrew and Courtney‘s. We discussed José Saramago‘s strange Blindness. (Bookworms: there’s a sequel, Seeing.) After the discussion, as we were loading the car to leave, Kris spied the statues in the trunk. “I don’t want those,” she said. And then she got a sly grin on her face. “Let’s leave them for Andrew and Courtney.”
I snuck back up the driveway and planted the statues in a flower bed, taking care to pose them so that they kissing.
Who knows where they’ll end up next?
You were our chief suspect. I’ll take this as an admission of guilt. The Dutch children will be staying with the Cronk’s for an undetermined amount of time…until they have slipped from you memory. Then one night, the cats will mew piteously. You’ll tear the CPAC from your face, turn on the light, and bam! in your face Dutch children. Their rosy cheeks and powder blue smocks haunting you. A blood-curdling scream will tear from your lips and then you’ll rue, oh yes, you’ll rue the day that you ever brought the evil Dutch twins back into the world. Muhahaha!
Unless the pictures are deceiving, we know a good thing when we see it. We’d be happy to have the Dutch children. (Kristin and Roger kept them hidden from us.)
My brother and dad had some sort of coat that they kept giving back and forth to each other like this. It would show up mysteriously in the back of the car or in a closet. Finally, my father stuffed it behind the sheetrock while remodelling my brother’s bathroom. When it was all finished, he provided my brother with the photos showing the steps of his crime.