The day that Santa died.

Was trying to transfer some old files from a mostly worthless old laptop, prior to recycling it, and came across some stuff I had written years ago. I completely forgot this existed.... perhaps I'll clean up some of the other ones, and post them, too.


The day that Santa died.

As is often the case, the story begins before I had a chance to sit down with my first cup of coffee. I was actually on my way to my sister’s house for coffee, and early morning pandemonium courtesy of her boys, my nephews, to whom I am a large wonderful toy. You’ve all seen the scratching post /perch/ carpeted thing to climb that are the joy of so many house cat’s existence? I am this toy, for my nephews. Which I wholeheartedly approve of, until they get big enough to be a real challenge to my superior might and intellect. Which will be 3 or 4 more years on the might part, and 6 weeks or so on the intellect.
But I digress.

Early and often.

I was driving down the street, listening to Ike Reilly on the CD player, when I spotted him, crumpled in someone’s front yard.
“Jesus Christ, that’s Santa.”
Santa looked like he had fallen from his sleigh at some great height, and came to an abrupt and permanent halt at terminal velocity in the slushy front yard of a brick Georgian, in a southwest suburb of Chicago. What an anti-climatic end for such an august personage. This guy had made millions happy over the years, brought a sense of wonder and whimsy to generations of people, hung out with cats like the Mizer brothers, Burghermeister Meisterburger and the Winter Warlock, and had a well documented obsession with the undersized. But, like it is for all of us, at some point in time, it’s your time. The siren song of Mr. Coffee interrupted my thoughts, and I kept driving.
A couple of blocks further on, and goddamn but there was Santa again, in the same sad state I had just witnessed him to be in. And this time he had company. It looked for all the world like Frosty the snowman had broken the big guy’s fall. This act of selflessness did neither of them any good.
I listened close for Jimmy Durante’s voice, explaining to all of us what had happened, but heard nothing.

While I never cease to amuse myself, thinking like this, I was questioning whether or not it would amuse others in the re-telling, as I pulled up in front of my sister’s house.
Not everyone has the penchant for dark flights of fancy, as do I.

Of course I had not actually observed the tragic evidence of some mid-air collision earlier, but a number of those gawd-awful inflatable lawn ornaments with which so many have gone to so much trouble to ugly up my neighborhood during this most sacred of seasons.
They’re ugly enough when wasting valuable natural resources to power the engine that powers the fans that keep them inflated, but they look like nothing but colorful piles of refuse when the plug is pulled.
Or, perhaps, the result of a really bad accident...