A tale with something at the end.

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Once upon a time, in an outstanding Appalachian community, there was an outstanding high school.
And within those old outstanding brick walls there grew an outstanding legend:  that of the stair drunkard.

As you can imagine, this tale began not with the hushed whispers of awe, but with a laugh.
"Yes, there's this guy .. the stair drunkard, you see."

"Ah yeah, right," I probably replied.  Too many years have passed for me to get the words right, and I know I am being slightly dramatic here in my presentation, but the truth is this really happened, and the conversation was something like that.

"No, really, there is a guy who gets drunk, and stumbles down the stairs in the morning."

"Sure."  Some legends have to be seen.  And I saw him.

One morning, at about a quarter 'til eight, a tense crowd gathered down the hall a short distance from me.  I had just stepped out of a classroom.  Curious, I stepped forward a little ways; close enough to hear the arguing.  Close enough to see the fists fly.  Close enough to see the legend's appearance.

He did not merely stumble down the stairs.  Oh no.  He fell at the most devastating moment in the fight.. the one where one gentleman in that fight had just picked up a galvanized steel trash can, preparing to bash the other in the head.

And the back of that gentleman is where the drunkard fell.  I seen it... he stumbled right down those steps, fell forward, into his back, sending the trash can flying forward through the window of the high school hallway with a resounding crash.

The thick southern accent of the freshman science teacher / PE coach echoed.  "What .. tha .. hell.. is .. goin' on!   YOU, COME HERE!!!!!"

And I'll be darned.. that stair drunkard found the means to run.  Who knows how far he ran.  He's out there somewhere, ready to stumble into another page in history.

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The hall fight was remarkable in of itself, but would it have been so memorable if someone had not told a tale of a clumsy guy always falling down stairs a few days prior?   I'm still holding onto a silly legend because of amateur storytelling.   Here, in the hypno-fetish, there are a few better than amateur storytellers that like stirring things up. 

Look around you and see what fabrications there are every day.  Oooh, so and so supposedly did this wicked (far-fetched) suggestion and blah blah happened.  There's the skeptical mind that reasons that it's unlikely, and then there's the legend feeder brain apparatus that wants to take that in, and link with other "corroborating evidence" that proves that something evil is indeed afoot.  Break out the pitchforks!

Truth is, if you open your eyes, you see that fiction gets people pretty far, where people might not see through things so quickly.  People think they can run on tales forever, and in a way, they can, until the curtains are thrown back.  Real is real.  Legends are for storytellers and suckers.  Maybe you'll see a trash can improbably fly through the air at an unexpected moment.  It doesn't make it all magical.  You just wish it were, right?

Yeah, I wished so too, once upon a time. Ghosts scream in the night, hiding from sunlight, hoping not to be seen for what they are, while unanchored dreams twist in the wind.  Figments of imagination, all of it.

Show me real, show me different, prove me wrong.  You can't do it.