Why Rarity is a Not Garbage Pony, by Bean Vine Hooffield

My name is Bean Vine Hooffield, and I’m writing this here to set facts straight about my friend Rarity. Now I’ve been hearing a lot of talk from some ponies that’re saying that Rarity is a garbage pony, which is just not right. I think a certain book she wrote in may have caused this to happen. But seeing as how I know that what they’re saying is not right, and with me being the only pony in my family what can write, I’ve decided to take it upon myself to un-wrong this not-right that has happened to a good pony that’s wronged and deserves righting.

Now I haven’t read the book myself, as my older sister Haylip Hooffield is the only one what can read in our family. She got that name on account of her top lip looks like it’s stuck up her nose, and she’s always rubbing and licking it until it’s red cause she says it itches. Anywho, I can’t read, and so I don’t know what Rarity said in her book. But all these ponies going around saying that Rarity is a garbage pony are just wrong, factually wrong. Rarity ain’t a garbage pony, as she works in the dress business, not the garbage dump business. So if she’s always helping prettify other ponies, making them feel good and all, then that would actually make her the opposite of a garbage pony. I’m not sure what the opposite of a garbage pony is, but take me for my word when I say that she is definitely a not garbage pony if I ever seen one—though I haven’t seen many, honestly. We mostly got other garbage ponies living up here in the Smokey Mountains, like that stallion Rusty Hooves what lives upriver from us, and who actually built his shack out of garbage that he found floating downstream. I guess I can spot garbage ponies better than their not garbage variety. But that’s how I can tell that Rarity ain’t garbage, because I just think that there’s a difference in a pony that goes around prettifying ponies, and a pony what’s got his house held together by rope and plastic ties. Any pony with sense could tell you that one of them was a garbage pony and the other wasn’t.

But sense says that they don’t just mean garbage, though, when they talk, I figure. Ol’ Haylip says it’s a metaphor, which I don’t think it is anymore but we don’t got a better word to call it. See, she read all this garbage business to me in a newspaper, which was lucky for me because she usually doesn’t read the newspaper, on account of she don’t practice her reading enough and so sometimes she’ll reads things wrong. Anyway, she’s supposed to read us all the newspaper during dinnertime, but she don’t usually. When those papers started piling up Ma Hooffield took to laying them out on the floor so that our hooves would stop getting it so dirty all the time. But one of the few times Haylip did read us the paper, it was talking all that garbage about Rarity’s book.

There were all these ponies in the paper that were moaning about how Rarity is stuck up and not nice. But I don’t know where they get such ideas. I met Rarity and her friends once. It was when I first went to Ponyville on account of I needed to ask Princess Twilight how to spell the word castle so that I could start sending her letters from the family. The princess took me all around town so I could meet her other four best friends. That’s when I found out what Haylip was saying earlier about a metaphor, cause it’s when you met-a-four ponies that you didn’t know before.

But that was when I met Rarity. She was not mean at all. In fact she was about as nice as she looked, which was very nice, and she was very nice to me. In fact a lot of nice things happened to me after we met, and it was all because of her being generous. I still haven’t forgotten it. The first thing we did was she took me out to her backyard so I could wash my hooves. How do you like that? I didn’t know her for five seconds and already she was helping prettify me. It made my cheeks turn beet a bit, as I couldn’t remember the last time a pony had wanted to see me looking prettified. Even the water what come out the hose was clean and everything, not like the tub we all wash in back home. She also tried to comb my mane a bit, but she almost lost her brush after about a minute of that. Rarity had a really nice and fancy house—without any garbage around at all, just dresses and this white critter that was hissing at me from under a table. There was this pretty red bow that caught my eye, but we went in the kitchen before I could really gander it. I was thinking about it, though. The red color kind of reminded me of Haylip’s mouth after she’d spent all day rubbing it. Thing is that, in a strange way, comparing it with the bow, it kind of made Haylip’s sore lip look prettified in my head the more I thought about it.

We all had tea and drank out of fancy glass cups. Then we started talking, only I wasn’t very good at it. When you’re from the Smoky Mountains, and you suddenly find yourself sitting with a smart princess and the most prettiest pony you’ve ever seen, you find that the cat’s got your tongue. There ain’t much to talk about that goes on in the Smokey Mountains anyway, especially since the feud ended, and I didn’t talk much even before that anyway on account of I’m the youngest in the family and don’t get no respect from any pony. But Rarity didn’t mind.

She and Princess Twilight started telling me stories about all these amazing adventures that they had with their friends, and how they used these pretty necklaces to save Equestria, and how they all knew both the princesses, and all sorts of things. That’s when Rarity told me about the serpent. It was kind of a confusing story. Way she told it was that she gave the serpent her tail when she saw he done lost his mustache, as it were a crime of the fabulous variety. She told it just like that, but I still just can’t wrap my head around a snake having a mustache. Twilight said that her dragon’s had one before too, which also didn’t make any sense to me, as I didn’t see no dragon. She had this big talking gecko in her castle that lived with her, but there wasn’t no dragon. Anywho, I thought that was a nice thing that Rarity did for that snake. My own tail wasn’t half as pretty as hers, but I didn’t think that I would’ve done the same.

When we were getting ready to leave I was looking at that bow again. She noticed and asked me if I liked it. So I started explaining to her about how I thought it was pretty, and that it reminded me of Haylip’s lip after she had rubbed it a bunch. Well, Rarity was so nice that she gave me the bow before I had even finished telling her what I liked about it. I said thank you and she just smiled so nice at me that my words didn’t feel like enough right then. She gave me a few other things, like this picture of herself that had her address written on the back, so I could write her. That picture was so pretty, and Ma liked it so much, that we hung it up on the wall first thing I got back. But I loved my red bow most of all. I wore it all the way home and didn’t ever take it off after. I kind of ruined it that way. Haylip says that it looks less like a bow is in my mane now and more like there was a big spider what crawled in it, got itself stuck and then died. But I still thought it prettified me good enough. Got me the attention of a certain wood cutter hunk what goes by the name Claptrap McColt too. I always love it when he says how pretty my bow is, and I say back that my beau ain’t so bad his-self. Course I got to take Rarity’s picture down when he comes over to see me or else he’ll get distracted.

I haven’t written to Rarity yet. I was so busy with my new look and my new beau that I didn’t think of it until I started hearing the mean things ponies were suddenly saying about her. It just burned me up to know that she was being hated by some ponies, especially after she had been so nice to me. I was going to write her and tell her about all that, but I didn’t know her address because Haylip had never read it to me. So I took her picture down and brought it to Haylip, and she looked at it for a second and said that the dirt from the wall had dirtied it to where it couldn’t be read no more. So now I’m fixing to go back again sometime so that I can ask Rarity how it is you spell boutique. I’m sure she’d give me another picture with her address on the back if I asked her. She’s nice that way, and because I was sure she’d even give me another bow if I asked, I decided to give Haylip my old one. It took me nearly a day to get it out of my mane. It had got tangled in there real good over time and I eventually had to ask if Haylip would get the scissors and cut it out for me. I asked her if she could keep an eye on it for me while I was gone, but we both know what I really meant. She asked me why I was trusting her with it, and to tell the truth I didn’t know it at the time. All I could think of was how I had seen her mouth look prettified in my head the first time I saw the bow, and how Rarity gave it to me when I started telling her about it too, and her nice smile that I couldn’t speak to.

Ol’ Haylip didn’t know what to think at first after I gave her the bow. All she or any pony else knew before was that Rarity had taken me in, given me fancy tea and helped prettify me when I went there. I seen her wearing the bow since, though, and her smile when she does is so wide that I can’t really get the words for it on this paper. I’m glad I gave it to her. That’s all I know. I’m also glad that I’m going to get to see my friend Rarity again soon, so that I can tell her all this stuff that happened since the last time we got to drink fancy tea together. I just hope she hasn’t heard about those mean ponies that’ve been calling her a garbage pony. But if I get there and she does needs cheering up, I’ll gladly tell her that she’s the opposite of a garbage pony. She’s a not garbage pony.

—Signed,

Bean Vine Hooffield

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