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Decorating Dilemmas
| Article
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16308 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1989 |
1,568 Words |
| Author
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Kathryn N. Hardin
Kathryn Hardin's humor articles first appeared nationwide
thirty years ago. This Arkansas grandmother draws on her
life, past and present, for her current anecdotes. |
Decorating dilemmas have been the bane of my existence for years, and as things stand now, there's no relief in sight. I'd be willing to wager that Sister Parish herself--grande dame of interior design--would be hard pressed to find a satisfactory solution to a Blue-spotted Horn Buffalo Skull--and that was one of the easier problems.
My difficulties stem from the fact that I have been the reluctant recipient of some unusual--even bizarre--gifts. Not only am I faced with the monumental task of working these items into the décor of our home, I am also faced with the grim realization that some facet of my personality has inspired these strange offerings in the first place.
I encountered my first decorating dilemma when our son called from a motel in Florida to say he was bringing me something he had bought at a roadside stand near Orlando. He wouldn't tell me what it was, but he said it was one of the largest of its kind and he just hoped it wouldn't affect the wind resistance of his MG.
"You're going to flip when you see it," he predicted.
I had a fleeting vision of his little car clipping along the interstate with a giant pink flamingo strapped on its roof. As it turned out, this unnerving premonition was wrong, but not by far.
The next morning, he walked in carrying a cypress knee that was so tall it looked as if it might easily qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records.
"Have you ever seen anything like it?" he asked.
"Never!" I admitted.
"I thought you'd probably want to make a floor lamp out of it and maybe use it over there by that blue chair."
I glanced at my delicate little Louis XV chair, and I'd swear it cringed.
Clearly, this was a situation calling for diplomacy and imagination. Using the cypress knee in our formal living room was out of the question, but it suddenly occurred to me I could put it in a fern banked corner of the sun porch, place a little brown frog beneath the foliage and … voila! It was a masterpiece, if I do say so. Also, my
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