Re: innocent no more
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Thu, 27 May 1999 17:34:51 +1000
I'm sorry, Jordie, I must change my mind. I'd now like to steal Scottie's
story to use as a short story (: Beautiful stuff. What is it about
Christmas - and we must remember that Catcher is set around Christmas time
- that is so delicately heartbreaking, poignant, and joyous all at the same
time?
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST http://www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest
> I wonder did I *ever* believe in Santa Claus?
> I somehow doubt it. I seem to have imbibed
> scepticism along with my mother's milk.
> The question does, however, evoke a vivid memory
> which - thanks to a particular circumstance - I can
> date rather precisely.
>
> On the eve of my seventh birthday (Dec. 23), I was
> walking home with my father along a snow covered
> street in the small country town in Scotland where
> we lived at that time. It was a night bright with a big,
> full moon. Trying - as ever - to be the comic, I made
> a great pantomime of suddenly glancing up at the sky
> & acting as if stunned by a fleeting glimpse of Santy
> & his reindeer already on their way, two days early.
> My father reacted with a dramatic continuation
> of the same pretence. When he persisted with the charade,
> though - even after I'd insisted I was only fooling -
> he did so with the kind of knowing smile that made
> us both conspirators.
>
> It was a wonderfully satisfying episode. *I* knew that
> *he* knew that *I* knew there was no such individual.
> In maintaining the joke, however, he had quite suddenly
> brought me into the company of the grown ups -
> the grown ups who maintain a vast edifice of rubbish
> with the specific purpose of keeping stupid people
> & small children in their place.
>
> I realised I'd now been promoted out of their company.
> I was one of the big boys at last.
>
> Scottie B.
>