Just as the majority of you, I found the news that some....idiot?  Idiots? had helped themselves to several of the newly planted flowers, near the FFA Ag Adventure Center on the State Fairgrounds.

When I spoke with Julie Hoffmann and Chris Howard about the project prior to the fair, they and the dozen or so volunteers who were engaged in the planting were all positive, smiling and upbeat.

When the word spread the other night that some idiots had removed some of the plants, we happened to be in the neighborhood and drove over to see.

Chris was there and the look on his face was anything but smiling and upbeat.

His smile then was one more of resignation. Maybe inevitability?

I remember my cousin, who is about the same age as I am, had gotten a new GI Joe one year for Christmas.

We played with it pretty much non-stop until, as 10-year-olds do, we saw something else and our attention shifted.

The next day, he was looking for it and it wasn’t to be found.

It turned out that he had left it in the middle of the floor and had been stepped on.

Joe was still poseable, but his left arm wouldn’t function again.

“If you had taken care of it, it wouldn’t be broken,” his sister told him.

“This is why you don’t have nice things.”

Which is kind of what you would expect an older sister to say, really.

How many times would anyone expect a person or persons to go out of their way to do something that not only improves an area, but also provides a way for people to learn and understand about what it is they are looking at?

With the prospect of it being ripped out within a couple weeks of installation, probably not very long. What’s the point?

I hope that whomever took the plants thinks about how they came to have them, each time they look at them.

Idiots.