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A Boomer’s Journal

By Tom Anselm

These long winter nights under my down comforter do strange things to my brain. Maybe it’s oxygen deprivation, I don’t know. I have some crazy dreams, but none nuttier than this Christmas dream. *

I was awakened by a noise on the front porch. I stumbled down the stairs, as I am wont to do these days, and opened the door to the sight of a small tree in a pot. In the tree was a pear, and well, a six-inch David Cassidy. You know, that guy from The Partridge Family? Then, two little white birds wearing Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle costumes swooped down, snatched the pear away from poor little Davey, and roosted in yon nearby tree. Next, up the driveway three brown chickens wearing berets came waddling. I spied four cardinals, the bird kind, not the baseball kind, perched on the mailbox, calling my name: “Hey, Tom! Tommy boy! Hey!”

Puzzled as I was at this onslaught of aviary assault, I was just as pleased when a UPS truck came skidding to a stop in the street, and out jumped Paul, my former basketball coaching cohort who, without a word, handed me a giftwrapped package from Lordo’s Diamonds. I bet you can guess what was in it? Yep, you got it… five gold rings.

See where this is going?

As I shook my now-snow-covered head at the weirdness of this scene, along came-honking six more birds, geese to be exact. They proceeded to randomly lay around the yard. One wore a head scarf and apron and tiny wire-rimmed glasses. Guess she was the Mother. And then a white trailer pulled up, depositing a rubber pool on the sidewalk, full of water and seven longedy-neckded swans swimming in circles like a merry-go round.

I wondered, as my bare feet became permanently frozen to the porch, if this dream could get any weirder. For out on the lawn, there had arisen such a clatter, full of birds, big and little ones, white ones and brown, fluttering and calling and laying around and yapping in French. And me, with those rings from Lordo’s.

Suddenly, I knew what was coming next. Sure enough, a small herd of eight cattle, one carrying a sign saying “Eat more Chikun”, (which did not go over well with the hens) wandered across the street, followed by the corresponding number of young maids who set up stools and proceeded to milking. On the yard. In the freezing cold. A Lincoln Town Car glided up, and out tumbled nine ladies from the Church Auxiliary, nine exactly, like clowns at the circus, and they start a Texas line dance to the music of none other than Garth Brooks.

They are followed by ten dudes duded up in medieval garb, a-jumping and a-leaping and a-hopping. a-making a complete mess a-things. And then came the piping. Softly at first, then louder and more shrill. Eleven lads in plaid skirts came out of my kitchen and through the front door. As soon as they hit the yard, my already-dizzy head was treated to the sounds of the Hazelwood Central High School drum corps, marching directly into the fray from behind my neighbors garage. Yes, friends, an even dozen of them.

Ah, ’tis a grand scene. There’s slipping and sliding in the yard awash in spilled milk and animal “residue”. We’ve snare drums a-banging, bag-pipes a-piping, fancy dudes a-leaping, old ladies a-line-dancing, young maids a-milking, neck-tangled swans a-swimming, scattered geese a-laying, rude redbirds calling, French chickens a-duking it out with the Ninja Turtle doves. And good old David Cassidy was eating the pear.

Of course, I couldn’t find them dang gold rings anywhere.

“Tom.. Tom,” I hear. Is it those pesky birds again? No, it is the lovely Jill. “You’re dreaming again, babe.”

And so I was. As I re-snuggled into my soft comforter, relieved not to have to face the mayhem of what would have been my front yard, I heard a noise on the front porch.

“No way, Partridge Family,” mumbled I.

“I’m going back to sleep.”

(*Not a real dream… Merry Christmas!)

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