Published: July 11, 1999

Section: NEWS

Page#: 22A

Editorial

Should I stay or should I go?

By Mr. Little Guy

It's not easy being six inches tall. Granted it's better than male pattern baldness but it does make life challenging. For instance, forget about finding a decent billiard table my size, woodchucks give me no respect and I'll never drive a real car, like a Jaguar. I'll always have to settle for a minivan. And I mean a mini-mini van.

I'm an elf. You probably know me as Mr. Little Guy, my friends call me Thom. In the summer I reside at Lake Harriet, U.S.A. We summer in a tree with a wee door. You call it the elf door, we simply refer to it as our front door. Go figure. You may know the drill. People leave messages in our tree and I answer them. The rest of the time I live in a castle to the east of Harriet, with my wife and our five-year-old daughter, Alta Lucia, the princess elf. Our castle has a copper door, marble walls and a cat named Whizzbang. If you can find it, stop by for a slice of minnow pizza.

Life is good, but I have to tell you I am getting a little discouraged with some Big People. Our cottage is being visited with an undo portion of hostility this summer. Someone keeps taking the darn door. So far this summer, the landlord has had to replace the door nine times and he's not happy. Truth be told, he would love for us to move out so he could replace us with squirrels. I know a couple of squirrels, Stella and Jo-Jo, who would die for this lakeshore property. But I am hesitant to move. We love the city - as you know elves are urban by nature - and I refuse to be cast out of my home by some overgrown bully. Of course by our standards you're all overgrown, but that's another matter.

You may think being an elf is all hi-jinks and samba dancing (well, actually it is) but it's really not any easier being an elf than it is being a Big Person. The fact is our lives are pretty much the same. We put our jodhpurs on both legs at the same time just like you. We fish for minnows and fry them up in olive oil (preferably on the beach) just like you. And we worry about the future just like you.

Elves by nature try to leave a legacy. Some work for S. Claus and put up with his demanding hours and rather cold working conditions. Others like the Keeblers, make an outstanding cookie even though they appear in those ridiculous TV commercials. Trust me those cartoons on screen no more look like a real elf than you do. For me the legacy is answering letters to kids who seem to have an unfathomable depth of interest in wanting to know about elves. How tall are we? (In my case I am taller than my younger brother and shorter than my older brother.) What do we eat? (Minnow pizzas.) Do we have a pot of gold? (I wish.)

Here's an elf question for you. What's your legacy? It could be as simple as making sure the ducks have food in the winter. Or that people do. It could be mentoring ladybugs (in your case, maybe kids) in something you're good at and they're not. It could be getting rid of the south Minneapolis airport noise that is driving Boomer the Chipmunk crazy. And trust me, you don't want Boomer the Chipmunk crazy.

Of course one elf's legacy might be another elf's pain in the jerkin. For instance, I know a couple of elves who want to make ElfBall their legacy. ElfBall our national pastime, is a game of two teams, a seven-player team and a nine-player team. I play left-of-center-guard, for the sevens. The game is played in three periods or until the nines find the lucky stone. In the first period we use a red ball, then add a yellow ball in the second period and a blue in the third.

The big discussion right now is funding for a new stadium. Believe it or not we have Lake Harriet and Lake Nokomis battling each other over who gets the stadium. Lake Nokomis, with an eleventh-hour proposition is promising us Little Beach, free commissary popcorn and play-off games at Bossen Field. Lake Harriet is so up in arms about this, they are promising us a special elf-sized light-rail trolley that would run from our tree over to the water pump. While a few of us elves understand the need for publicly assisted sports facilities, there are also a bunch of elves, trolls and dwarves who are very much opposed to to their hard-earned gold coins going to something as frivolous as a new stadium. This legacy thing isn't always as easy at it might seem.

But like I said, some ne'er-do-well keeps taking the door.

What to do? Move to the suburbs? Thank you, but I'd rather move to Mars. Fellow elves think I'm crazy not to move. They say this is the perfect chance to stop answering letters. Just blame it on the Big People. After all, they say, this is the way things are in the last fitful hours of the twentieth century. Just accept it. But I beg to differ. No way does life have to be this out of control. We need to help each other. For instance, the other day I met a couple of blue jays visiting from out of town. They had no idea how to find their way to Sebastian Joe's. Rather than turn my tiny little back to them I called my buddy Spike, the cardinal, and we flew them right to the ice-cream counter. We didn't even wait for a thank-you cone. Now if more of us just helped each other, why the next thing you know Jed would be a millionaire.

Humor me a goofball analogy. Years ago I slipped into Cuba to attend a troll's wedding. As an elf it was pretty easy. When I arrived in Havana I was amazed by how lovely the city must have been but how deplorable it looked now, after 40 years of neglect. It reminded me of an elegant old man walking down the road. From a distance he looks tall and regal in his dark suit and determined step. But as he closes in, we find him stooped in the shoulder, his pants stained and tattered and a pathetic shirt that has seen better days. In his tired eyes we can see what he once was. That was Havana for me. And I worry that we are walking down a similar road, but ours is paved with indifference and resignation until one day we'll look in the collective mirror and no longer see ourselves in a future we dreamed of as children but some shadowy, sad figure and wonder to ourselves, "My God, how did I get here?"