FRESH YARN presents: Off the Charts in Tears ... by Timber Masterson

FRESH YARN presents:

Off the Charts in Tears
By Timber Masterson

I poke my head out in the crystalline December air and commit to leaving my abode. I innocently go out looking to inhale some fresh air, but am forced to ingest the ever-popular Santa Claus Parade. I'm agitated, quickly exhausted, forced to view the urgency of suburbanites hustling and bustling, chomping at the bit to purchase presents that'll only be returned by spoiled offspring days later for cash to feed that pot and porno mag addiction. Yes, I'm far from in the mood for such ridiculous prancing. Also darkening my day -- the story already having leaked of Comet and Blitzen, selling their meaty, raw, tiny charges into slavery -- their rotten and embarrassing behavior, now dubbed 'Reindeer-syndrome' by some Eastern Syndicate -- the latest en vogue disease to get all flustered about. A good twenty feet above the heads of bewildered holiday zombies, a sign that I could have sworn said COME ALL YE HATEFUL billows in the breeze, but I could have read it wrong. All this, amongst earsplitting Charlie Brown Christmas music, performed by an astonishingly talent-free and all-too-tinny out-of-step and visibly nervous -- and perspiring -- grade nine all-brass bands.

The amount of papier-mâché involved in this weirdo frightful event is amazing and I'm feeling too much like Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver, pacing amongst the crowd, looking for an opening, too easily lost in film noir reverie...in pursuit of a victim, one that warrants it. There is a SWAT team for crowd control and, yes, there is tension. Gargantuan wavering snowmen with blistering swollen heads -- perfect bludgeoning targets, easily pummelable, zooming in on carrot noses; baffling tall gents in sweaty-antlered-outfits that only bring harm to children's defenseless minds. All now smashes to the ground, all left deranged, damaged and tainted. Everybody's brains and bodies seem barricaded, bewildered Christmas wanderers deserving of what's coming to them (at least that's what would happen in the movies), this from my bruised and purpled perspective.

A little girl dressed all in rhinestones and sparkly pink Yuletide gear, perched on a demented float, rides by at the jet speed of a beached sea turtle dragging a bloodied javelin.

She's energetic, inexorably excited, her smile gigantic and beaming. Later I figure out it had been painted on by a sluggish past-her-prime make-up artist, disturbingly nick-named 'Turtle.' She minces about, feverishly waving wands and batons (the child, not 'Turtle') at the crowd, then suddenly our eyes meet. This minute hellion tries to extract a big old It's a Wonderful Life holiday smile and grander wave from me, but I'm having none of her rehearsed delight. My response is a tilted head - perplexed and inquisitive - plus a knowing squint and my arms folded uncompassionately. Let's have some fun. I toss her a red and white candy-cane-flavored Frisbee, sharpened. I'm pretty sure she, and security, thought I was trying to pick her off.

She becomes self-conscience and shaky as my charming presence speaks to her:

"Just what are you doing, you homunculun oddity? What parental orb arranged for you to take part in this mockery of Old Saint Nick? Why the predictable pink and fake gems? What of your sparkly facade? Are you not chilly, inside and out? Can't you catch a damn Frisbee?"

All this spoken with a skeptical glance, not trying to be overtly harsh, really just wanting to cross the damn road. She starts to bawl, as loud as a child wearing pink, sparkles and a painted-on-smile bursting from too much cotton candy, rehearsal jitters and role in this carnival-crap scam-a-rama, can bawl. I had set little Hecubus' heart aflame and was called a "Mirthless Puddinghead Scroogester" by onlookers. A balding, Hudson's Bay-coated gentleman, clutching festively bright packages billowing with brilliantly colored ornaments (probably her father, or a Hudson's Bay Christmas tree salesman) runs to her rescue. He holds her close and comforts. The little girl spins her head around devilishly to cast the Damian-Omen-like finger in my direction, sealing my fate, casting me out. Fuck. This isn't going well, this 'crossing of the street' idea is now a complicated cavalcade.

The indistinguishable fatherly salesman type guy comes over and punches me in the nose. I slip and fall backwards, crushing a couple of seniors not paying proper attention. I admit I may have been half-deserving of a knock, though not fully deserving of the promotional funeral flyer he flicked atop my disheveled frame, the one that boasted of reductions on caskets. Now the day is really getting going. Par for this course? Uncertain, as the pro shop is shut down for the season. No one to monitor this mapless story of menschless, messed-up munchkin mayhem. Jesus.

This Dickensian death camp will soon be over, I reassure myself, but I am still on the battlefield, (minefield?) left to my own unpoetic devices: dodging floats; freak show countesses; easily swayed crowds; surreal scenarios; children with sickening festive agendas and their puppet idolatries -- with me off the charts in tears, as I miss everyone this time of year.

Luckily, I'm able to momentarily escape and take a breather. I make my way down a tailored walkway with freshly fallen snow, where I come across another fumbly father-child equation (so many of them) having a snowball fight in their front yard… or they're trespassing. If I could muster up the energy, I'd flag down a cop and report the man for child abuse. I decide to let the whole thing slide, for fear that I, in turn, would somehow get nailed for 'Snowball Possession', a crime that carries the heavy sentence of being forced to watch ghostly videos of past Christmas parades on extra slow-mo-speed.

Fortunately, they are in the giving spirit and donate some of their pre-made snowball artillery to my cause. I pack them down good and tight in my trousers, just in case I really needed to fight the Parade people back with wintery weapons.

Also, moistening in my pocket is a registered reminder of my start time in the yearly Company Winter Olympics. I've applied to take part in the Luge event. Must get that going. Where to practice? And just how am I going to look in my hand-sewn Luge outfit for the event? Hey, this might work out after all. I mean, these kids'll eventually have to abandon those catastrophically useless costumes from the parade, and since I must somehow acquire material - no, that would be sacrilicious...how many sins would that cover?

I hunt down a Black Market sinister mushroom-man with fake blotter-acid who fesses up and divulges the secret location where this whole travesty ends. I hike across town and wait for parade participants back at the starting point: an icy auditorium, scalding hot chocolate, weary parents discussing when they think their crazy children will be arriving back on their shoddy floats, and me lurking in back rooms conversing with profoundly marshmallow-laden costume ladies with too many stories:

"It was New York, the year 1958, a much younger, trimmer Ed Asner was lookin' for a dresser, so I told my parents to go to hell and that I'm cutting this dyke-school-scene to break into showbiz, so then..." I endure Grizelda's bizarre nostalgia in order to procure colorful fabrics, cloths, textiles needed for my uniform in an upcoming sporty project (not to mention some pretty darn funny comedic material).
I end up being arrested and held without bail for trying to lure youngsters away from their costumes with alfalfa salt licks, carrot noses and a half-eaten box of After Eights.

"It's not the kids, I only want their costumes! I'm not some pervert, I just need the material; they don't need it anymore. Unhand me!"

"Tell it down at the station, Gramps."

The arresting officers said I was nothing more than a sour, judgmental presence, but for the life of me I couldn't see it. Nor did I see how such behavior could be considered criminal. I told them calmly that this day somehow reminded me of finely chiseled crystal coffins whizzing down an Arctic icy racecourse. Sour, maybe. Judgmental, never.

They transported me to a cold, damp igloo of a hollow-minded police station; the snowballs not confiscated in the arrest are melting down my trousers. I try to make a game out of it, but it's all turned awfully unfunny; thoroughly-iced-genetalia going numb with the rest of me, hungry corrupt constables staring at me, eager to cross examine, to extract 'the truth' from my mind's eye. I'm melting and starving, just having missed the once-a-day snack allowance. Pockets deep with regret, like snowmen who've gotten off at the wrong stop and forgotten their extremely odd-shaped-underwear not prepped properly for the all-too-humid and airy aroma of an early thaw.

Where DO crafty snowmen go in springtime? Oh, they have places, you just have to look.

All this I had scribbled down on a notepad, scrunched somewhere in my back pants pocket, now lost or stolen. I bet it was one of those Goddamn cherubic-float-riding kiddies just back from eating entire cotton-candy-floats, who gobbled up my Life Notes, testing to see what's edible and what isn't at their after-party: appetites insatiable, unquenchable thirsts. Never satisfied.

Okay, maybe I have done that. But I'm not like them. I'm not like anyone.