NP - Frank Miller's Charlie Brown

[Glenn Scheper]

Second childhood: 57.

High SAT is not a predictor of success, at least, not for me.

> Coast and mountains. Hard to beat.

Yeah, they come into my ToastMasters Tall Tale, to wit:


	Xanadu Inspiration


I had not yet faced the onerous task,
so like homework,
of staring at a blank piece of paper
to write my tall tale.



I found myself out bicycling,
and chose not the hard left road up over mountains,
but took the right road circling through valleys.


That road too, eventually,
gradually,
rose up over the middle of the mountain range.


And I found myself looking down at the sea.

I saw a small island,
and,
beyond a palm tree I thought I made out
something I recognized...

	the appearance of swim fins.


A man was practicing flippering on his
own private little one-man island.


And further to the left, I saw several more
islands, each with a man practicing his art.

Excited, as this is my sport, I pedalled down
and out on a jetty, to an office, onto a boat.


I slid my ten-speed in between the rows of seats
on the boat, not the center row leading to the
head and the cabin, but another row, and went
looking for the captain.

I found two men talking, and introduced myself
to one who only stared at me blankly, as he was a
foreigner.

Then up behind him walked the captain,
shaking my hand. I wanted to enquire about taking
snorkeling lesson. But I perceived the school was
only for police officers.

So I went back to where I parked my bike, and,
you know that feeling, when you know where you
left something, and it clearly is not there?

	My bicycle had been stolen!


I went into the office to report the bike stolen,
and before I could get a description out, a deputy
really ticked me off, saying, lots of people have
golden hair.

And then I couldn't be sure that the thief really
had golden hair, but I didn't like his attitude.


So I went out, and saw him parking MY bike on a rack
at the end of a field, and he clamped something onto
the top bar, and locked the front wheel to the rack.


I went back in to the office, saying I see my bike!
And the officer says, Well it might not be your bike.

So I go down to the end of the field, and look it over,
and it is mine, it has tape in all the same places, and
I inspect a water bottle and a lock that the thief added.

Both of them have price tags saying the name of the store,
"Goof", which was in double quotes, which is the same name
of the store co-located with the police station.

And I ran back in to tell all these things, and how the
things were purchased right there! And again only get
a lukewarm reception, hearing, well, maybe if we got the
thief on videotape from the store, while the officer
detachedly studied the open breech of his revolver.

Exasperated, I go to leave, and look out the window,
and see the thief has unlocked my bike and is riding it
around the track that circles the field where we are.

And I turn again to plead for action, and the officer
goes in a room and puts out an APB, but his deputy
goes immediately outside.

And then I run out the other way, and I hear shots fired.

I run around the building to see, not a bicycle,
but a big horse drawn carriage. The driver gets
down and says, is there something wrong officer?

He is large, and wearing my green outdoor jacket.

The driver is smarmy, and the carriage has an
electric quality, the dark effulgence of evil.

"What do you have in there?"

"DVDs"

And I know that he has rather a water bottle
and bicycle lock, the implements of his theft.

And I woke up, and said,
"Yeah Lord, we got him!"

And I said, "Thank you, Lord, for supplying
dreams and visions on my bed at night!"

I paced around, excited, recovering all the
parts of the story, and by the time my heavy
breathing had abated, I realized, and said,
"Thank you, Lord, for my Tall Tale!"


Hence the title, Xanadu Inspiration. Xanadu
being the magical land of poetic inspiration,
such as happened with Coleridge's Kubla Kahn,
received all at once in a vision.


Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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