an excerpt from The Memoirs of Stanley Cooke

This is my selected writing for this month. But first here's a bit of background information. I wrote a narrative poem several years back, and though I don't want to go in to detail about the poem, I will say that I used the poem for the basis to a story. I as began writing the story I realized that it would end up being quite long. So rather than post the entire story (which is good because it's not finished yet) I pick just an excerpt to post. The basic premise of the story, and there for this selection, is it's an old man reminiscing about various things in his past.



excerpt from The Memoirs[1] of Stanley Cooke

My brothers and I waited in line for over an hour. When we finally did get up there we were given only a handful of seconds to spit out what we wanted for Christmas. Many wouldn’t make it. The elves, who at times acted like Santa’s jolly guards, would scoop us up quickly and send us down the steps returning us to our parents if we hesitated too long on what we wanted. Troy was the youngest and, per our parent’s instructions, we were to let him go first. But as is the case with many first timers, he started crying before he even made it to Santa’s lap. Jesse and I were going to make fun of him later but the truth is, the same thing also happened to both of us on our first time. At least Troy didn’t pee his pants like I did three years ago. When Jesse got up there he, for some reason, went numb and just stared blankly at Santa. After a few seconds he too was escorted by one of the elves in the direction of our waiting parents. I was a little worried of a similar fate for myself so I prepared ahead of time. As I was placed onto Santa’s lap I pulled a wrinkled piece of paper out of my pocket and began reciting the notes I had prepared. I described in great detail the fighter jet replica I wanted, which came with a cock pit hatch that opened up and pilot that could be removed. It also had an optional parachute you could attach to the pilot which made for a completely separate toy on its own.

I could tell Santa was pleased with my preparedness and when I got back to my parents I was beaming. Disappointment adorned the faces of both of my brothers and their misfortunes pleased me that much more. “It’s okay” I told them, “you can always send Santa a letter, the mail still runs on Christmas Eve.” Ha ha! This was an argument of consolation that my mother had used on me previously. Though I was young, I was old enough to have lost some faith in our postal system. I knew there was no way they could get a letter all the way to the North Pole in just one day. My mom tried to tell us that they used military planes to make sure they got there in time but even at my young age I was skeptical. I continued to give my condolences to my bothers as we made our way to the exit and the irony of my words consumed me with joy.

With our goal accomplished for the evening we made our way through the crowds toward the parking lot. We always parked near the entrance that leads to the toy section. The idea was we could take one last look at things before we went to Santa to tell him what we wanted. In reality it was so they could see what we wanted and then they would go back and purchase those items while we waited in line for an hour to see a fictional character. It was really a pretty ingenious setup. When leaving the store we always made the longer walk to leave through the exit near men’s suits. My parents didn’t want to take us back through the toy section because there would inevitably be something we missed the first time that we really wanted more. I’ll give my parents credit, they had developed a good system. However, this year, Montgomery Ward was really pushing their new line of bicycles and had built a display in the middle of the men’s suit section. My family was out the door and half way to the car before they realized I wasn’t with them. They clamored back in calling my name and found me in a trance, practically drooling over the Schwinn ‘Victory 400’ bicycle. “I need it.” I said faintly. Dad grabbed my arm and jerked me toward the door and at that exact moment I conjured, from somewhere deep inside, some sort of super human strength. I jerked back with all my might and, catching dad off guard, I nearly pulled him to the floor. “I got to go back,” I shouted, “I got to go see Santa. He’s gonna bring the wrong thing!”

I put up an enormous fight, but it was all in vain. My parents wouldn’t budge on their position. Dad was instantly furious, “You had your chance, you’ll just have to wait until next year.” My mom tried to be more consoling, “You can always try and mail him a letter. The mail still runs on Christmas Eve you know.” I got home and immediately wrote out a letter. I explained to Santa how I had made a mistake at the department store and the bicycle was what I really wanted. When we said our bed time prayers that night the only thing I prayed for was the planes and pilots taking our letters to Santa. My mom had to remind me to pray for our family and Aunt Martha who was driving to see us after Christmas and all the other meaningless dribble we were suppose to pray for. That night I had a dream that I was piloting one of the army planes flying letters to the North Pole. The Germans were firing at us from below and all of my men were scared. “Be brave men, there’s no turning back now. These letters have got to get to Santa,” I said in a commanding voice.

We got a fresh snow on Christmas Eve morning but I couldn’t enjoy it because I was worried about those pilots getting my letter safely to Santa. My brothers played all day in the snow but I just sat on the porch and moped, thinking about that stupid fighter jet replica. What was I thinking asking for that toy? I mean, I’m almost seven years old, way too old for a kids toy like that. I’d get bored with it within a few weeks if I didn’t break it before then. I was so stupid. On Christmas morning our parent’s always made us wait in our room until they called us down. The suspense was horrific. Finally they yelled upstairs and we all sprinted ferociously down the stairs. I shoved my brothers aside so I could beat them to the den. Even though there was no point for me to hurry this year I still felt that it was my rightful place as oldest brother to be the first one down. I rounded the corner into the den and setting right there in front of the fireplace was a bright blue, shiny rimmed Schwinn ‘Victory 400’ bicycle. My parents made me wait until the afternoon to ride it so that dad could help me learn “how to handle a hog like that.”

At dinner that night I volunteered to pray. I gave thanks to God for the military and especially the pilots. The next day I crashed the bike into a curb, was thrown, and broke my arm. By the time I was willing to get on a bike again I was old enough to know that Santa wasn’t real and that my parent’s loved me more than I would ever give them credit for.


1. Am I allowed to call this a memoir if its about a fictional character? I don't want Opera on my back.