Friday, September 13, 2013

Tis the season



Because we live in a hyper Candid Camera era, where some kind of oddball public prank or flash event may take place at any moment, I go into a state of alert when something eye opening starts unfolding in my Library as if it is just happening "naturally." 

And yet all these strange, carnival weirdnesses that take place here actually do seem to be natural, they don't show up on youtube, and they aren't stunts designed to blow our minds. They are just the everyday magical confluences of a varied world.

And what is it today? You ask.

Santa Clauses.

Upstairs today, less than an hour ago, I was able to count six, yes six full on Santa Clauses! No, not guys in costumes. That kind of thing is small time. There's always some reason for that. These are the real deal, just regular men, going about their business, who happen to fit, in every basic, out of costume particular, the required parameters of Santa. Rotund? Check. Late middle age or older? Check. Full white beard and white hair. Check. Rosy cheeks. Yeah, pretty much. It's a warm day, they had to climb the stairs. Did they all have a twinkle in their eye? Well, no, let's not get carried away, it's a Library here, not a charming story about the North Pole. But the best one had maybe a little twinkle. I don't know. Give them all the suit, a pipe, a few gifted reindeer, and they all would have been perfect enough. As they actually were attired it was more like they were of the funny Santa genre. Santa on vacation in bermuda shorts. Yes, he's up there. Biker Santa. Yes, but he comes here all the time. There was a kind of techno Santa too. Santa nerd I guess, all wired up, packing screens. He seemed to have an antenna coming out of his head. So no classic Santas, but more like they'd all come from magazine advertisement photo shoots as companies put together their Christmas print campaigns. A hip, modern Santa selling Christmas computers, that sort of thing. Of course they were a bit too real to really be that. One guy had water bottles and ziplocked sandwiches strapped to his body, another sported mysterious, overstuffed briefcases. Many had tangled or frayed or unkempt beards. I literally can see one more across the library coming down the stairs. He has suspenders, which is very Santaish, and an army camoflauge shirt, which isn't, and a tan golf hat. Very white hair, long enough, but beard a bit thinner than ideal, and his cheeks could be rosier. I'm gonna throw him back. I can afford to be picky. I've got so many to choose from.

2 comments:

  1. How odd. Could it be your library's proximity to the North Pole? Perhaps maybe some secret underground cloning lab? You don't seem to have thought this through.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I considered our proximity to the North Pole here, but it got cut from the post in my editing process! Perhaps there's some weird leak in Canada and they just trickle right through!

      Delete

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