Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for June 28, 2011

um…. I don’t…..?

Any friend of Janice’s would probably appreciate them.

You’ll realize they’re not real friends when they ridicule your whimsical figurines?

@SusanSunshine, does the phrase “a plague of frogs” give you a clue?

Any friend of Janice’s would probably appropriate them.

Soon nary a surface will be left uncovered without more friends’ frogs! How do you explain I really don’t especially like frogs? Please stop giving me frogs!

Everyone who sees them will then “know” what to give her on future occasions.

took me YEARS to get ppl to stop getting me dragons

Thanks lowthgs I didn’t have a clue.

Yeah, I had the same problem with tigers, and it all started with just one stuffed tiger from a day at the zoo tossed on a shelf. Pretty soon I had a tiger throw, 2 t-shirts, 3 figurines, 2 framed prints, and a bed sheet set.

A former co-worker used to have two little frogs on her desk, and all the folks who had been there way longer than me used to keep putting them into obscene poses together whenever she left her desk.

lwothgs is spot-on! My wife has received almost every dolphin-related thing under the sun as a present: Pictures, statues, Christmas tree ornaments, t-shirts, place mats. etc… she always cringes when she sees dolphin stuff now because she knows somebody will probaly be giving it to her soon.

I worked with a woman who had a few pottery and ceramic pigs, but she put almost all of them away when people came to visit. She said that she was very careful who she told about her collection as she didn’t want to be flooded with pigs. Same thing happened with a friend who had a bad reaction after eating some mushrooms collected in the wild: everyone for years gave her mushroom themed gifts. Too much of a muchness.

I thought if I looked at the comments I’d find out what Arlo was talking about… thanks to all for the explanation.

If people see the frogs they will get them more frogs. It happened to me…

Turtles. For me it was turtles. It takes years for it to stop.

For a while with me it was teddy bears

Arlo has a point there.

This makes absolutely no sense – the consensus is that if you put them out then friends will comment on them? And that is a bad or undesired thing how?

DukeOfURL The point is that Janis’ friends will give her frogs from now on. Janis will get 10,000 frogs in the next ten years.

I have no idea how it started, but folks started getting me little animal figurines. Not the same animals, but different animal figurines . . . I asked my Dad to build me an ark and for many years displayed it in my home (of course, before he built the ark, he carved me some animals ;-) Now, it is safely put away for a future grand niece or nephew (and because my cats think of the animals as toys for them ;-)While I don’t have any sentimental connection to the animals from friends, I am very grateful that I have something that my Dad made as a result!

@dukeorurl Not that your friends will comment on them, but rather that they will seize on them as a convenient gift item to give you without having to think of something else. Some of us really do like to have friends add to our collections, but it has the potential of becoming an undesirable flood, especially if you really hadn’t intended to start a “collection” in the first place.

Aww… poor Janice

I went to the office of one of my college professors and asked about the frog figurines covering every surface. He told me he’d gotten one and then people, tinking he collected that sort of thing, kept buying more for him, to the point where he had dozens. Thereafter he made it clear, the only think he wanted to collect was sports cars. Anyone wanting to buy him one of those was welcome to do so.

Arlo’s comment was very vague to me. I had to read the comments to figure it out too. I think saying something that was more suggestive of the exact results would have been better for us “slower” readers. Once I read the comments, I thought about how my grandmother had dozens of music boxes, not because she collected them, but because they were gifts. So I though, cool,….. I love dragons, I’ll put out my dragons. For years now, I have had them hanging everywhere in my house but alas, no dragon gifts…. LOL… Dragons just aren’t cute enough I suppose.

I kept a collection of empty hot sauce bottles on my desk. That worked out very nicely.