Fearing the Reaper: Christmas Shopping

So. I am up in Frankenmuth, Michigan, (the Christmas capital of the world) Christmas shopping three days before Halloween. I listen to the mash-up of songs in my hotel room, on my phone, because I forgot my laptop. 'Don't Fear the Reaper' gets stuck in my head. I'm walking around listening to blaring Christmas music in every store and every time there is a second of silence or I am between stores, I hear strains of that song and the words 'Don't Fear the Reaper' reverberate. While I am Christmas shopping. Weird. Just. Too. Weird.

Don't fear the reaper...

I only know the song from the Stephen King movie, 'The Stand.' It struck a chord, but for a while I couldn't remember from what or why. It was just stuck in my head, ear-worming its way around and around, drowning out Jingle Bells and Silent Night. I love the music they play up there, but I couldn't hear it over that one line and it was almost annoying because it wouldn't go away!

Don't fear the reaper...

I heard some girls giggling and it all came back. A pajama party with my eldest daughter and a bunch of her (then) teen-aged friends. They'd chosen to watch the movie of 'The Stand." They'd cajoled me into watching it and I was enjoying it. They, on the other hand, spent most of the movie giggling about something or other. We'd made a humongous bowl of popcorn and at one startling point, someone screamed, then the rest did and the bowl of popcorn went flying! What a mess. Popcorn EVERY where! I think we were still finding popcorn a week later!

Don't fear the reaper...

A few minutes later, I walked by a popcorn stand and didn't I just have to get some? Course, the darned song is STILL stuck in my head. I'm seriously thinking of watching the movie again. I now have grand children the age she was at the time of the pajama party. Seems like a life time ago, but it makes me smile. Met a woman today who just lost her husband of SIXTY-NINE years. We were chatting and in the course of the conversation, she said that they'd had a marvelous marriage and that every day is special and unique. She's eighty-eight and still going strong and intends to keep on doing so for as long as she can. She's planning a trip to the UK next year and France the year after that!
She most certainly would be one to say:

Don't fear the reaper...

There's a lesson in that.





434 words