THE VASE WITH THE UGLY PEOPLE ON IT

A couple of weeks ago, Mom was in a thrift store, and she found a really goofy piece of pottery that somebody made by hand.  We think it is maybe supposed to be a vase.  Or else you could drink out of it, like a glass, except that it isn't made of glass.  It's not a mug because it doesn't have a handle, and mugs are supposed to have handles.  So it's likely a vase.  Or I guess it could be a pencil holder.

Anyway, the weirdest part about this pottery thing is that there are really ugly people painted on it.  Also there is a dog.  Or if it's not a dog, it might be a dinosaur.  So when Mom saw this thing at the thrift store, she looked at it for a while, and then she walked away, and then she came back and looked at it again, and finally she decided to pay $3 for it, just because she thought it was so ugly that it was charming.  Which doesn't make a bit of sense to me.

In my not-so-humble opinion, the only reason to buy anything is if (1) it can be eaten, (2) you can sleep on it, (3) you can play with it, or (4) you can chew it up.  And this pottery thing did not fall into any of those categories.  But it's Mom's money, and if she wants to totally waste it, there's not too much I can do about it.  Mom said she might drill a hole in the bottom of the ugly vase thing and use it as a flower pot.  She does that sometimes with pottery she buys at thrift stores.

Okay, so now I am going to show you some pictures of the ugly painted people.  On one side, there are two people who are kind of fat and lumpy-looking.  The one on the left might be a man, and the one on the right might be a woman.  I can tell that she might be a woman because she has flowers on her dress.  She has feet that are sort of shaped like people's feet ought to be, but he has feet that look more like a goat's feet.  And both of them have hands that also look like goat feet.

On the other side of the vase, there is another couple, and they are normal sized, not overweight.  He is wearing glasses and a hat that definitely looks like a man's hat.  Also he has on a jacket and trousers.  She is wearing a skirt and some sort of flat hat on her head.  They have feet that are shaped like feet, but their hands are kind of pointy and strange.  Next to the woman, it looks like the artist started to draw another person or a creature of some type, but then there wasn't enough room.

If you turn the vase around a little more, you see what I think is a dog.  Other people may think it is something different, but I'm pretty sure I'm right, just because I usually am about these things.  I believe this dog is wearing a birthday hat and is standing under a balloon or maybe a piñata.  The dog has his mouth open, and you can see that he has sharp teeth, which he is probably hoping to sink into some birthday cake.  The dog probably belongs to one of the couples, but I'm not sure which one.  I think it might be better if he belonged to the fat couple, since they are more likely to celebrate his birthday with a big, yummy cake.

Under the dog, you can see the name of the artist, which is TEWKS. And then it might say 09, but it's kind of hard to read, so it could be some other year.  As far as I am concerned, it is a total mystery why Mr. or Ms. Tewks would make a piece of pottery like this and paint such ugly people on it.  And another mystery is how this item ended up in a thrift store, where the people who work there probably said, "Oh my gosh, look at this crazy thing!  Who is ever going to buy it?"  And then when Mom came along and actually bought it, I think they probably had a really, really good laugh!