Noses

Once upon a time there were two villages. One on the south side of the mountain, where people with short noses lived. On the other side lived the owners of long noses. Each village was proud of the size of their nose-ship and both villages liked to keep their noses clean. Small nose village was called Shirts, because how Long Nose village called them: button up your shirt with your nose under your neck. Shirts also grew sweet grapes on their sunny side of the mountain. “You have nothing to grow on your side of the hill, this is why your noses grew so long from envy. Long nose people, especially women, were known for being nosy, always wanted to know what the neighbors where doing, what they were cooking, what their goats were eating. “You are nosy!" "It's none of your business!” When long nosed people met short noses they called: “Cover up your noses, it will be raining, so your nose will stay dry.” On the mountain lived a special category of people, people with crooked noses, noses to the left, or to the right; noses with a hump. These people were saving money from selling sheep wool and sheep and one day quietly disappeared into the city to get their noses done. After that they found living in the City with people who have had straight Roman noses and when they met someone with a teeny nose they called: your nose is cute as a button, so people from Shirts were pulling noses of their babies and small children to make their noses to grow bigger. What about people from Long Noses? Are they also saving money to disappear into the City to get their noses shorten? No way! Long noses are very proud of their long noses. “We can afford their length.” Their mayor have to have the longest nose in town. “Our noses give us our personality. We don't care about uniformity of straight noses. So noses in the City are all mixed up, only in Long Noses they keep their long noses. It's called tradition. Marie Neumann, 10/12/14 Copyright (c)