Just One Wish

But you can't always get what you want

Lofty promises made by DJT in 2016 about bringing back “beautiful coal” was never grounded in reality. But it sure got a lot of press, and isn’t that what campaigners covet? Maybe ONE coal job was brought back to the USA for one of Santa’s helpers so that he could provide coal for Uncle Sam.

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It’s easy to fall into a rabbit hole while browsing online. I’m not complaining because time wasted is often a tradeoff for knowledge gained.

A few years ago, when I was tasked with creating Christmastime infographics for Creators Syndicate, I was intrigued by the idea of children getting a lump of coal for Christmas. Naughty kid stories and Christmas monster myths are abundant online, complementing the season’s goodness.

Krampus is my favorite.

Enter the rabbit hole.

Krampus sounds a little like “Grandpa’s”, does it not? I barely knew my grandfather; he passed when I was only five. But Grandpa’s mate, Grandma, of course, was a character of legend who stuck around much longer.

My brothers and I used to get a kick out of reimagining our quiet Italian grandmother as an ass-kicking monster of high-end fury who revealed her true nature to only a few of us. Something like Robert Wilson, played by a young William Shatner, when he saw a creature on the airplane wing in the Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

“I’m not imagining it!” he says. “He . . . he jumps away when anyone might see him. Except me.”

We still laugh about this crazy idea some forty years after Grandma left us, which says something about the staying power of imagined monsters.