Merry Christmas everybody. Feliz Navidad. Peace on Earth and goodwill to man.

Love You all,

David

Have you ever been transported to another dimension? A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind? To a mystifying land of imagination? Well if you have, then you were probably in the Twilight Zone. I think I was there.

Hear me out: I walked in the park a few weeks back when I saw a boy, 2 years old, maybe a small 3-year-old. He was at street level, while I was in the park below. He was going to roll down the curved incline into the park on a three-wheeled scooter.

I was alarmed because he seemed too young to pull off that feat, but his mother sat on the grass and watched him, so I figured ‘we’ll see what happens.’

As I neared the spot where our paths would intersect, he launched himself down the slope. That scooter’s wheels lit up in psychedelic colors as he sped down the walk faster than I anticipated. The scooter whirred and got louder the faster he went.

The kid almost hit me, but I moved out of the way, and he swept behind me onto the grass where his horrified mother yelled at him. She apologized to me several times. I told her it was no big deal, but I acknowledged the little bugger startled me.

I continued my walk. I could hear the mother, who seemed quite stressed, still scolding the boy. I was probably 50 yards down the way when I heard the scooter coming. I glanced back, and Shorty was coming fast on my side of the concrete walk; I moved to the other side.

He caught up and just as he passed me, he swung his scooter around in a perfect sweep and blocked my way.

He looked me in the eyes and said, “Step aside.”

This from a toddler?

Now you can understand why I believe I was in the Twilight Zone. I was certain then that the aspiring hooligan tried to hit me when we first crossed paths, and his mother knew it.

Well, another man might have been annoyed.

Another man might get mad.

But this man laughed and laughed and laughed.

The runt moved on down the line on his turbocharged scooter, wheels flashing in the distance, his anxious mom left far behind.

Submitted for your consideration: Space and time conspired to bring a sinister tot with preternatural scooter skills face to face with a man simply out for a walk. In a showdown, laughter is the weapon that thwarts the tyke’s malicious intentions.

It happened here, where cotton once grew, in the middle of a vast desert, on a speck of a planet called Earth, where a portal at street level opens into the Twilight Zone.

David Madrid

Contact: David Madrid

FabulousFables.com

© 2025 FabulousFables.com

I do not take credit for the list above. I found it on the Internet. I decided to write a story using these vernacularisms, and I got carried away and added a few favorite words of my own. What big words do you like?

Note: Obviously, this is fiction.

The Flimflam: An Adventure in Thesaurus Land

Once upon a time a boy bamboozled me. He fed me some codswallop, betting me $100 on a cattywampus gamble that was hogwash wrapped in gobbledygook.

I was momentarily discombobulated by the audacity of the culprit’s shenanigans. The bloke, a flibbertigibbet chap, talked incessantly. What I gathered, what it took him several minutes to explicate, was he bet he could change wine into water. He called this miracle “a reverse Jesus.”

“Poppycock!” said I. What a thick-witted name for a marvel.

I suspected chicanery, but my curiosity mixed with greed was piqued. I succumbed to the lure of effortless money. The skinny imbecile drank a glass of wine, and said that within 12 hours, he would urinate, and the vino would be made into water. Sure enough, a quick Google search showed that urine is 91 to 96 percent water. I was thimblerigged and apoplectic at the same time. I was deceived. I was flabbergasted by his brazenness.

Using logic, I expected the bloke to attempt to substitute the wine for water, and I would discover his deception, thus winning $100. I was hornswoggled.

I am persnickety as it is, and I was flimflammed, which triggered my pugnaciousness, and for his blasphemous skulduggery I refused to pay up in Jesus’ name. The galoot threatened to thrash me, and I went ballistic and engaged the whippersnapper in a physical altercation.

A kerfuffle ensued. The dingleberry was gobsmacked by my sudden attack; and suddenly, he was on tenterhooks fearfully zigzagging to avoid my hellacious strikes.

He was an evasive rapscallion. I took a moratorium from my blitzkrieg to catch my breath, which attempted to escape me, and I called the ninnyhammer on his malarky and deemed him a nincompoop and whatnot. He was flummoxed by my onslaught and refusal to pay, so he called his guttersnipes, who I did not know lollygagged outside, and a brouhaha commenced.

There were three chuckleheads, so I grabbed a whatsit? A thingamajig with a doohickey on the end, from the fireplace, and I crouched and walloped my assailants on the shins as they advanced toward me.

One ultrathin bushwhacker threw a roundhouse that landed on my noggin with the force of fresh-baked pumpernickel. When he realized his attempted haymaker was a dud, he pivoted and beat a retreat. I responded with an emphatic counterstroke across his bony buttocks with my whatchamacallit.

The charlatan and his posse backtracked and hesitated as they pondered my weapon, my apparent invincibility to doughy punches and my ferocity. Their shins were sore, and one had a welt on his derriere. The boy and his coterie skedaddled like the nincompoops they were, no doubt off to canoodle with their mamas.

Note: I do not mean to besmirch materfamilias with a juvenile mama inference, but rather the reference is aimed at the hooligan aggressors and their pusillanimous dispositions.

David Madrid

Contact: David Madrid

FabulousFables.com

© 2025 FabulousFables.com

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

I love those words.

Where do they come from?

A Visit from St. Nicholas

By Clement Clarke Moore

Written 1822

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Source: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (Random House Inc., 1983)

I hope you enjoyed the poem; sometimes the old words are the best words, and you never forget them.

FabulousFables.com also urges you to read these Christmas stories:

Read: “Rufus the Snot-Nosed Reindeer“

Then: “Rufus the Snot-Nosed Reindeer: The Reckoning“

Finally: Rastas Boodrow: A Christmas Story

© 2024 FabulousFables.com

Email: David Madrid