Prudentia Sit

Here's a new story.  I won't give you the prompt until the end.  It's called, "Dave's Karma"  (Not our Daveman Dave)

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Dave's Karma

When a day and a half went by and she hadn't gotten a call, she started to worry.  Al always called her.  Always, as in, all the time.  They were best of friends and could carry on a conversation until a battery died, but she had never gone this long without a call before.  When she tried to call, all she got was voicemail.

 

As she pulled into the visitor parking lot at her friend's apartment, she saw a tangled mass of plastic and wires lying on the ground.

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I was over at Beej's Blisteringly Brilliant Blog (Possibly the most alliteratively named blog on the Internet.)   yesterday and she was talking about how she and an old friend got together for a gossip, er, catching-up session.  Apparently a common acquaintance of theirs had gotten a major hair job done and became a longhaired blonde.  It was what they call a "weave" and was a twelve-hour job costing six hundred dollars.  And in the words of Beej's friend, "She suddenly looks like Rapunzel."

Beej asked the question, "What could I do with $600 and 12 hours?"  Now this kind of sounded to me like the beginnings of a writing prompt but it's kind of open-ended.  I mean, what could you do with $600 and 12 hours?  So Herb's writing prompt, inspired by Beej's question and my own imagination (since I don't know any of the people involved) is:  "A woman's husband is out of town on a business trip and while he's away an envelope comes in the mail stamped ‘return to sender.'"

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Joseph's First Christmas

Part 4

Bethlehem is very small and David was very prolific.  Even on feast days in Jerusalem itself you do not think you have ever seen so many people.  You have been to every house in the area, relatives you have never met, strangers they have referred you to, but the story is the same.  If only you had come sooner.  You hang your head.  What can you do?  You have tried everything from cajolery to bribery but it is the same story and when you get back to the party, Mary is having pains.  The real thing this time, too. 

You decide to go back to the inn you were first at.  It is getting late and you go to speak again with the innkeeper.  Every inch of space is covered by someone.  The innkeeper has also tried to find someone who would give up their space for your family and has offered as much as five times what they paid on your behalf, besides, the people are packed in so tightly they couldn't move if they wanted to and do you really want your wife to give birth here?

"What am I to do?"

"You can see there is no room, none. What am I to do?  I am already going to sleep standing up myself."

The man's wife, a sturdy-built woman, comes out of the tiny kitchen.  She has rented out a room to weary travelers and fed them with her husband for many years and has never seen anything even remotely like this but she has risen to the task.

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Joseph's First Christmas

Part 3

Dawn does not even cross the sky as you begin your journey.  Mary tries to smile but you have come to know that look.  You start up the mountain pass and the sky is just turning into a grayish pre-dawn light and Mary says, "Joseph, I must stop and cover my feet."  {Author's note:  To "cover one's feet" meant going to the bathroom in Bible times.  HT} You feel angry and frustrated because you have not even been traveling more than a few hours, but you try not to show it.  Your place is to try to smile and make the atmosphere light because the others look to you for support and their moods are strongly influenced by yours.  You stop your little group, help your heavy wife to the ground, make a couple of jokes with her father and soon are ready to move on.  You must steel your nerves as this is going to be a long trip and will likely be how the whole thing goes.

As night finally falls you look for an out-of-the-way spot, knowing thieves and worse often travel these same roads.  It has been many, many years since you slept under the stars, and you are thankful that the weather is mild.  You look up at the expanse of the heavens and wonder how Abraham felt when he looked at the very same sky and The El-Shaddai told him his children would be as the sands of the sea and the stars in the sky.  Speaking of stars, you have not had very many occasions or desire to study them, but you notice a very unusual one, a brighter one that seems somewhat low in the sky compared to others.  As you picture the trip you are taking it seems as if the star is hanging about where your destination is.  Mary has told her family the peculiar story of her elderly cousin, Elizabeth and her baby named "John" of all things, and you decide the time has come to tell them the whole story.

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Joseph's First Christmas

Part 2

You cannot believe your ears.  A Roman herald, here in Nazareth with a proclamation from the Emperor, the Caesar, "Augustus" he calls himself, standing in the middle of the town repeating himself, "All people everywhere in the world shall be registered and taxed in the cities of their origin by the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month." {Author's Note:  I know there is no indication of the time or date, so I picked one, reasoning that the Romans would put some sort of deadline on such a thing.  This fits best in my imaginative telling.  HT} You groan within yourself, knowing that registration will be done by tribe, clan, household, and family.  You think of your poor young wife who is due to be delivered of the child any day, any moment, really and you shake your head.  You are both heirs of David, no big thing these days, but this would mean a trip to Bethlehem, the city of David's birth.

"Sir," the word uttered to a Roman makes you want to vomit. 

 

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To all of my dear Fans, Friends, Fiends and Foes,

Greetings, Salutations and, uh, Hi There,

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!  Welcome to my Christmas present to you all!

 Commercial-mas is almost upon us this year and things are as crazy as ever.  Since, as some of you know, I grew up (you couldn't tell I grew up?  I'm off-topic already, lol.) In a religion that didn't believe in any celebrations of any sort, especially Christmas, it is still a really magical time for me.  I am constantly filled with awe and wonder at the story of the Creator of the Universe being born among us.  Not as a king, but as the poorest of the poor.  I am awed by the practical side of the story, too.  I like to imagine different parts of the story as I get ready to teach it to my 6 & 7 year olds in Sunday School.  You can take every aspect of it and make something special and interesting, and often funny, out of it.  I mean, I live near the mountains and have had the misfortune to travel up the Interstate to Denver.  75 miles does not sound far, but you have thousands of people who live in Denver that work in The Springs and thousands of people that live in The Springs and work in Denver and every single one of them is always running late.  This is not a fun trip, but then I had another thought.

 

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