If There Were Counting Gnomes

In my yet-to-be-published book, I imagined a new species of Gnomes known as the Counting Gnomes. They differ in a number of ways from the more commonly known varieties of gnomes such as Garden Gnomes or Forest Gnomes. Most notably, they love to count things. They can, and often do, spend the entire day doing nothing but counting.

For example, a Counting Gnome can devote an entire morning to counting the number of blades of grass in a lawn. During lunch he’ll count the number of macs in his mac and cheese, then go outside to count the number of clouds in the sky. If a thunderstorm rolls by, he’ll count the number of times he hears thunder. Moreover, just before he goes to bed he’ll count the number of different things he counted during the day.

When a Counting Gnome says, “make every day count” – he really means it!

Garden Gnomes and Forest Gnomes think all this counting business is silly and do not get along well with their Counting Gnome brethren. They also find it is silly that Counting Gnomes have palindromes for names. After all, how ridiculous is it to have a name like Ottomotto Onono, Ikki Tonsasnot, Ababa Booboob, Nippin Pinnip, or Oopoo Boogananagoob?

As you can imagine, things are different during the childhood of a Counting Gnome. For example, they spend their summers at Camp Counting and they sing the following camp song each day:

We are the counters,
 Mighty, mighty counters!
 All the people we encounter,
 Ask, “What’s the amount there?”

 So we tabulate,
 Then enumerate.

 We are Counting Gnomes,
 Mighty, mighty Gnomes,
 Our homes are tiny little domes,
 Our names are palindromes.

 So we tabulate,
 Then enumerate.

 One, two, three, and four,
 It’s time to count some more.
 If we get to four score,
 Gonna have eighty more.

If There Were Counting Gnomes