FOUND OUR SPOT

Yesterday, I saw a larger-than-life metal sculpture of a zebra outside French Connections and thought it would be the perfect lawn ornament for our new home in Moncure.  Today, Bob and I went back and bought it.

Zebras have long been a theme in our life together.  Years ago, we dreamed up a comic strip which featured a zebra named “Spot.” We were going to call it “Savannaland” and it would be a combination of Disneyland, Dilbert and the Far Side.

Spot, the main character was based upon a photograph in National Geographic of a zebra with a spot between two of its stripes.  The premise was that Savannaland was engineered to create the illusion of reality.

The animals clocked in every day in an underground tunnel.  Their job was to provide a Safari-like experience for human tourists who were carted around in land rovers just out of sight of the inner workings of the theme park.  Spot was one of the operations guys who worked alongside make up artists, cafeteria workers and actors to create a lifelike Savanna.

And then there’s the zebra picture.  For as long as we’ve been together, we’ve hung a painting of two galloping zebras on the wall inside our back door.  In the picture, the zebras are running away as fast as they can.  They hang by the door to remind us not to hesitate when it’s time to leave.

It’s hard to say where we’ll hang our zebra picture after we move this time.   We think this may be our last move.  For one thing, we’ve grown very attached to the people in our new neighborhood.  We work together, eat together and play together.  For another, we’re in our fifties now and this will be our fourteenth move since we got together seventeen years ago.  In fact, I’m able to remember more than forty homes .

We plan on naming our new yard art “Spot” and putting him out to graze the front yard beside the pampas grass.  He isn’t pretending or running like those other zebras in our life.  He stands head up, with all four feet firmly rooted on the ground.  This zebra stops here, proof that we’ve finally found our perfect spot.