Letter in an old File

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Cleaning out old computer files seemed like a good idea to do while John and grandson David were away for three days. I had erased old lists, plans, and notes to people who are now dead. I hadn’t planned on giggling.

I wrote that I heard Lise laughing in her room and asked what was so funny. She replied, “I’m reading your family letters that I got in college before scanning them. Look at this one.”

I shouldn’t have laughed, but I couldn’t help it. A child told me a nightmare he’d had. Of course, one can’t share the horror of a dream in broad daylight. I could understand he’d waked with heart pounding and sweat pouring off him, but there was nothing in the telling that could make me quake. The punch line was so exquisite that I can’t resist writing it. You won’t let him know, will you? I wouldn’t want his feelings hurt, and he won’t be ready to hear this one on himself until he’s 25 years old.

In a confidential monotone voice he said, “I had a bad nightmare. A buffalo came at me and then elephants. This was in the mountains, and an elephant picked me up and carried me off up the mountain. It was awful. I was hunting for the abba, — the abda, — the ABDOMINAL snowman when I got picked up.”

That kinda hits you in the stomach, doesn’t it?.

Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

Published

33 thoughts on “Letter in an old File”

  1. That is funny! I’ve just been going through some old letters, some from very young grandchildren and a nephew. So cute and the spelling is often funny.

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  2. I get his pain. When I was young I always worried about alligators under my bed. I lived in Pennsylvania. No alligators. I didn’t have (and neither did my mom) any idea where I got this.

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    1. After I read Old Yeller as a child, I saw rabid yellow dogs in the corner of my room at night. Perhaps that is where I got my penchant for vivid dreams that I can recall in detail–“seeing” them before bed. 🙂

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    2. Maybe you got it in the ALLEY?

      I was afraid of something under the bed, but I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it was just a Boogey Man, and that could have any description as long as it was scary to me.

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  4. 🤣that kid was smarter than the average abdominal snowman…it was a pick at your subconscious mother-nurturing gene to get some comfort ice cream in his tummy!

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    1. My dreams are not all pleasant, either. I’d like to hear some of yours if you feel like telling them. I had a recurring nightmare of not being able to see clearly. After I had double vision after scratching a cornea, the dream did not come back.

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  7. So nice old file opened. Very interesting & funny write up letter. I can read & enjoy., Beautiful share her experience in story . I like! 👌🌹

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      1. Checking the weather and hoping to get away for a few hours before a very rainy week. There is a centipede at large in the bathroom -carpet is same color as it is – I feel sick. it will have the run of the house while I am gone.

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          1. I follow a recipe/food blogger who lives in Ohio and we were discussing bugs once – she told me to buy glue traps and set them out around the house and it would help. My friend Ann Marie also hates creepy crawlies and heard mint repels them, so she bought us pure peppermint oil to put on cotton balls. I tried it and it didn’t help. I signed up with TruGreen to do five perimeter sprays this year for the little ants. I signed up in March and paid them – haven’t heard back yet and I’m going to contact them this week, though we have a week of rain AGAIN. Maybe that is why, but this is a perimeter spray for all creepy crawlies, specifically mosquitoes. I wasn’t keen on them coming into the house and to spray – we had that for years and it smells and you have to move furniture back from the walls and move things in the garage as well. The odd thing is, I’ve usually got ants by now – I haven’t seen an ant yet. They told me to use “Ortho Home Defense Max Ant Roach & Spider” once they spray as the bugs will head inside – I was a little freaked out about that and ordered three cans from Amazon that day. I have not seen that centipede since I got back from walking and worked outside in the yard for a few hours – wish I could have killed it.

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              1. I never found that critter Anne and cringe every time I walk into the bathroom where he likely left and is lurking somewhere else in the house. I haven’t contacted TruGreen because we have rain all week and they’ll say “we can’t spray in the rain” (at least I hope that’s true).

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    1. I’ve known lots of children with very good vocabularies, and he is one of them. He just couldn’t quite get it started off right. That incident was probably 40 years ago. Since then, he has published several books.

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