“Dear Woody,”

I Began.

A Short Fiction

By

David A. Archer

02/15/1968

09/26/2006

No, really.. I was a normal kid. I couldn’t begin to tell you where it all started, doc… so I guess I should start with last night.

I was shocked really… in so many words, you know. There I was.. asleep. I couldn’t believe it, but I was actually asleep. I knew this because my dreams get really weird, really fast.

Anyhow, before I knew it at was at that grandiose writing desk… you know the kind, those old fashioned type that you see in mall windows and old people’s houses from when their kids totally have exhausted every other gift idea for someone they have been buying gifts for forty years…that kind that rolls up in the front and still has the ink well hole that no one knows what it is for….

Like I was saying... this one was huge. So big that the sound of it when I rolled it up was more like some medieval torture rack than a wooden cover. It creaked and groaned like a draw bridge.

Then it dawned on me. It suddenly bore a striking resemblance to a hippopotamus coffin.

Don’t ask me what a hippopotamus coffin would look like… because I haven’t ever seen one… but this one was definitely similar I am sure…

So I’m creaking the cover open and I see her leg. Gorgeous leg....I knew it had to be a blonde… but it was just one, one leg that stuck out from the side of the desk part… almost like it was supposed to be in the way when you were writing.… you know how girls are…

Anyhow like I was saying… the thing creaked open and the leg was right there… and it had a fuzzy Christmas like garter on it… with stockings… net stockings that were stapled to the wooden side of the desk…with a sign taped to her knee that was a reminder note for me not to forget to write Santa this year.

Alright I thought to myself as I noticed that the leg was just clean shaven under the stockings.. and I reached for something to write with and write on… which, no big surprise here, turned out to be a piece of old shoe canvass for some reason that someone else had already started to scribble something on with a marker or something….

So I pull the shoe canvass out of the one of the little compartments just behind the silky smooth leg… and I then realized that what I had grabbed to write with was a bit slimy.

Again, no big surprise here because like I said, my dreams can get pretty weird… but I looked at the slimy feeling in my hand and found a soggy cotton candy cone that looked like I just pulled it out of the puddle under my old mans 72 ford way back in the day…

I won’t ever forget that puddle. It was everywhere. In the driveway, on the curb… anywhere he parked that thing there was a puddle… but it wasn’t oil… at least not that I could tell… the cotton candy cone that is….

So I get over the fact that this soggy cotton candy cone is almost about to drip and it’s a good thing too, because I decided to start writing my letter just then… so it turned out to be almost like a perfect timing thing… you know those… when something almost falls off of the counter and you can’t quite catch it before it shatters all over the place…

So I start writing… “Dear Woody,” I began.

“Wait a minute!” I said to the note on the gartered leg…. “Who the heck is Woody and what does he have to do with Christmas?”

I looked at the old shoe canvass just to make sure, and sure enough their it read; “Dear Woody.”

Now doc, you know I am not one to trifle and get hung up on silly little things… so of course I just took it in stride and kept writing my Christmas letter.

So, “Dear Woody,” I began…. I really liked the trip to the ball park the other day with the