BROMSGROVE, ENGLAND — Add to the ever-growing list of threats to the sanctity of childhood innocence the danger inherent in naked lawn gnomes. Indeed, so harmful to minors is the sight of a lawn gnome sans their charming ethic garb that one British woman has been ordered by the local government to put clothes on hers.
Sandra Smith’s naked lawn gnomes have lived in her front yard for the past 15 years, every one of them spent as skyclad as a Wiccan ritualist. Yet, for some reason, this year the 64-year-old woman’s gender paired gnome couple was declared a menace to children.
According to Smith, a neighbor complained about the statuary’s lack of shame and its invariably deleterious effect on the community’s children to the Bromsgrove District Council.
As Smith sees it, “They have been here for around 15 years and everyone who visits me finds them funny and a bit of harmless fun. They’re proper cheeky chappies with their little smiley faces looking up at you.”
Alas for the bare skinned couple, the Council apparently has no sense of history, because The Daily Telegraph reports that Smith has been ordered to provide clothing for her yard dwellers.
Although Smith insists that she’s “going to be keeping the gnomes in the garden with their T-shirts on at the moment, but I’d love to get the gnomes out in their glory again” her neighbor insists that such a move would be a social tragedy.
Unwilling to be named or keep her children away from Smith’s yard, the neighbor is nonetheless happy to be quoted as saying “I don’t think they should be in a garden with my young kids running around nearby.”
The easily mortified neighbor continues by stating that “They are childish and I think it’s pathetic that they are in a front garden in full view of everyone.”
Something is pathetic, that’s for sure.
