Voyeuristic Gnomes

Picture of the Day for 3/19/2014. Years and years and years ago when I was still living at home with my parents, the gnomes pictured below showed up on a shelf in the downstairs bathroom (i.e., MY bathroom) right above the toilet. I thought it was creepy to have gnomes staring down at me, but despite all my pleas and arguments, my mother refused to remove the gnomes and she also forbade me from moving them myself. As a compromise, she put tape over their eyes to prevent them from watching me. That was totally my mother's smart aleck sense of humor. 

She used to do stuff like that to my dad all the time. The stories are legend. I guess one time he complained that she wasn't folding his pajamas correctly (mind you- this is the 1950s when such things were expected of wives). She took some cardboard and folded his pajamas neatly around it so it looked like they had been recently purchased and just taken out of the wrapping. The thing is, she used about 100 straight pins to pin it in place. I think it took forever for my dad to unpin his pajamas from the cardboard.

Another time, my dad suggested that he'd like the dinner table setting to be a little more formal. She responded by using newspaper for a tablecloth and tin cans for candleholders. (I think I'm telling these stories correctly. They pre-date my arrival.)

My dad's reaction to all of these pranks was to laugh and say, "I guess I should have known better than to say anything."

Anyway, back to the gnomes. My sister Robynne ended up with them (as she is a collector of gnomes), but she graciously agreed to let me have them back. I was feeling nostalgic about mother and the gnomes. And just where did I end up putting them? You guessed it! On the windowsill above the toilet of course!