Friday, October 31, 2014

True Yuletide Story

This is a Christmastime story, that for years i thought was cute. But in retrospect must have been scary for my parents.

One year when i was 3 or 4 my brother and i shared a bunk bed in a small house in western Wyoming. It was Christmas eve and we had already read Luke 2, and looked at the red light in the sky (from a radio tower) and confirmed Rudolph and Santa were on the way.

As visions of transformers and Legos and star wars toys danced in our head, you can't expect young boys to go immediately to bed. But i knew if Santa caught me awake, he wouldn't leave any presents, so when later that night i heard noises in the house, I peaked through the hole in my foot board to see what it was. To my young mind I saw Santa turn the corner of the hall with a wooden lantern and glance toward my room. Then leave. I stayed silent and tried to sleep, amazed that i had seen Santa.

Of course this all comes from the memories of two young boys. According to my mom we shared the exact same story, down to the lantern and other details. Mom treated it like a special event and always reminded us of the time we saw Santa, would even have us tell our other siblings when they thought they knew the truth about St. Nick. I have always wondered what happened. Was it my dad dressed up as Santa, did two boys just make it up with their late night talking. With the memories so distant, who knows what happened.

Years later when i was an adult, i asked my mom to tell me more. Finally she dropped the facade of it actually being the jolly old elf.

Even though we were safe, in a new house now, I saw a cloud come over her face as she recounted, how it had been a happy Christmas, with my parents spending too much money, on their children. Her two sons were playing with their new lego set, when we mentioned we had seen Santa. She thought it was just a funny thing at first, but when we described him, he didn't sound like Santa at all.

Separately we both described a man wearing ewok clothes, with a lantern. He wasn't fat, but was actually skinny. Why would we boys think this was Santa, except for the fact that it was Christmas Eve. My mom said she had been a little concerned, but when my dad found that he had left the back door unlocked, and footsteps leading to and from it. They both got pretty scared.

Mom said she didn't know what the guy was looking for. Nothing was taken or disturbed, but someone was in our house that night.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Happy Bday



A D20 is a  20 sided dice.   The numbers are what you roll on it.
I wrote this for a friends bday.  and thought it turned out well.  

Roll a D20

IF you roll a 20  Happy birthday,  the mountains shout and beautiful women flock to your house hourly bringing figs and wines and cute edible puppies.   You parents also just bought you an island, which, has a fully functioning armory and missile battery that can reach 4 of the seven continents.  

If you roll a 15-19   A talking horse, carries you away on a magical carpet ride.  You are treated to the sights of Indiana, you even have a variety of corn named after you.   Your siblings all become your slaves and you rename them after various scatological terms.  

If you roll a 11-14  fairly normal day, high lights include cake, ice cream, you get more facebook comments than ever, and a slightly better present than you were hoping for

If you roll a 10  cake, ice cream underwear, socks, and breakfast in bed.  

If you roll a 6-9  the cake made you sick.  Hence you spend the evening on the toilet.  Which coincidently has fungus on it.   You get many fine books and games… that you already have.  Also for some reason all the clothes you get are size xxl.  Someone writes a long facebook birthday message with very poor grammer and spelling, as if ! punctuation is an art^^form and not a science()

If you roll a 2-5 finally the recessive gene your parents both carry becomes manifest. .. unfortunately all it does is cause your appendages to fall off.  But at least torso boy is an attractive stage name for the circus.  You are strapped to the underbelly of a llama for transport.  While traveling you are kidnapped by a strange cult in the mountains who see you as the long promised liberator.  But when you fail to liberate they force feed you wheat and cinnamon until your gizzard is full.  Then they roll your limbless body down a stony hill into a fire pit.  As you begin to burn your cell phone falls out of your pocket and you see a text message from your mom “hey forgot it’s your birthday, is it ok if we have Spaghetti-o’s tonight?”

If you roll a 1  the planets aligned and you stumble into a time warp.  You find yourself in a small farming town a cool breeze blows.  The local theater is playing 3 men and a baby.   You walk down the street and notice a couple walking behind you.   The woman suddenly seems much more interested in you than her companion.     And starts following you.   She is oddly familiar.   She lays on the flirting quite heavily, you have icecream, and find yourself dancing to (I had) The time of my life, which everyone seems to know.  Half way through the dance, you feel your body start to lose feeling.   You look and appear to be fading out of reality.  The pretty lady withdraws in horror, everything is getting more and more blurry.  It’s as if your existence is being stripped away.  You fall to the floor.   As the dance floor clears you see a calendar on the Wall.  December 1st, 1987.   One of the pretty ladies friends is comforting her, and you realize you never asked her name.  As you slip away from existence, you hear her friend say it.  “There there Leah.  It’ll be ok”



Monday, March 17, 2014

A new children's story

Jimmy was new to town
he didn't have any friends
he walked home alone every day.
poor jimmy, so sad
one day as jimmy was walking home, he saw a ball
it talked to him
"hey jimmy, you're awesome. lets be friends"
jimmy picked up the ball and took it home
he played with the ball all afternoon
later, that night jimmy's mom got mad that he didn't clean his room.
she locked him in his room
jimmy cried, and cried, til he fell asleep 

was awakened by his mothers screams
his ball had eaten her--
later when the cops came jimmy learned that his ball was actually the disembodied head of a sentient zombie serial killer.
jimmy learned never to play with strange heads.