The Writing Machine

Stories by Christian Cloud Abraham

Don't let the Headless Horseman Get Him

I know I shouldn’t have, but it was bedtime and I couldn’t resist telling him the story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow seeing that it was my favorite ghost story as a kid and it was Halloween and maybe he is only 4 and a half so I shouldn’t tell him a story as scary as that but hey, Danny Phantom episodes are as scary as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow so it didn’t seem so bad and besides, it’s not like he had to see it on the screen to make it even scarier and I was telling it off the cuff and making some of it up like making Ickibod Crane a tailor in Townville and he gets invited to a ball in Sleepy Hollow by the girl he was making a dress for. Well, I guess I did too good of a job and maybe it was my face because when I told him about the part where the headless horseman appeared, my son started shaking with fear and I had to stop several times to make sure he wasn’t going to have a heart attack but he begged me not to stop the story and insisted he was going to be ok and when I turned out the lights, he settled down enough for me to finish the story with a big dramatic buildup of the pumpkin flying towards Ichabod…

But earlier in the story, I made an editorial decision: I decided it would be too much for the headless horseman to get Ichabod and so as I built up the pumpkin flying through the air in slow motion as Ichabod and his trusty old horse I named Bessie jumped across the bridge to safety, I let the pumpkin splatter on the Sleepy Hollow side of the bridge and Icibod escape from the headless horseman ending the story that even though Ichabod thought the girl he danced with at the ball was wonderful, she was not wonderful enough for Ichabod to ever go back to Sleepy Hollow and he never saw her again.

And so when the story was over, my son hugged me for the story and said, “Thanks dad for not letting the headless horseman get him.”

“Sure thing son. Did you think I would?”

“No.”

“Good.”

And I smiled and kissed him a happy Halloween goodnight.

END
© 2006 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on November 1, 2006 in
Emotion: Tender, Type: Journal Entry