NP - Frank Miller's Charlie Brown

[Bekah]

61  -     and I remember age 19 (1967)  quite well - but not my SATs.

bek


On Mar 17, 2009, at 10:41 AM, Glenn Scheper wrote:

> 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
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>