One of the most rewarding experiences of my life occurred on my younger sister’s 40th birthday (everyone thinks I look younger). I arranged for a glorious display of forty lovely, plastic, hot pink flamingos to be flocked on her upscale, historic district front yard (the city will remain nameless to protect the cranky).
Perhaps it was just a desire for revenge that had festered for many decades (we will not say how many) after I discovered a dead, frozen three-foot fish in my bed one night, but let’s just face it, the morning they flocked my sister — well, things just don’t get any better.
Okay, maybe it was the fact that the cops caught the guys flocking the house (which is located across the street from one of the country’s more famous art museums) and had reached the point of selling tickets to the whole affair when my sister was aroused from her long winter’s nap.
I can still see her now, clad in red plaid jammies and scurrying around her front yard, removing the flamingos. I don’t know what was funnier: the cops watching her, or the fact she was absolutely furious over the event. Nah, it was the fact that her neighbor, a prominent local politician on his early morning jog, caught her outside in said jammies as she hid said flamingos behind the house. He laughed so hard he woke half the neighborhood. Soon, everyone in town knew what was going on. Let’s just say the parade of well wishers and spectators was worth it.
You see, my sister is one of those humorless people who does not appreciate the magnificent tackiness of the plastic pink flamingo. She doesn’t like pink, she doesn’t like flamingos, and she thinks pink flamingos of any kind are disgusting. Naturally, I have adopted the noble bird as, well, maybe an attempt at flipping the proverbial bird at my sister. Okay, they really annoy our mother. She is one of those people would never have a dollop of dust on her two hundred-year-old antiques or her showroom size collection of Waterford. Everything in her well-decorated world is perfect. Thus, I rebel. (Childish, isn’t it?)
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