Monday, December 29, 2025

Short story – “The Santa Shakes”

“The Santa Shakes”

“Hello.  This is Amy at Doctor Bodden’s office.  How may I help you?”

“Hi.  This is Doug Ryan, and I guess I need to make an appointment.”

“Okay.  What’s seems to be the problem Mister Ryan?”

“I’m not sure what it is, but for the last few days I’ve felt rather … odd.  But not in like a bad way.  I don’t know.  It’s rather hard to describe.”

“Is it like there’s been an uncomfortable weight on you that’s suddenly been removed, but you’ve grown used to the weight so it’s absence is weird?”

“Yes.  Yes.  That’s it exactly.”

“Okay.  Something that’s pretty common around this time of year is Christmas Music Withdrawal.  People hear nothing but Christmas music for two months and they grow accustomed to it, then Christmas happens, and then it’s cold turkey back to normal music.  For most people, this odd feeling goes away after a few days.  What I can do, is I can pencil you in for an appointment for … Wednesday.  If you’re feeling better by then you can cancel, but if you still feel odd, the Doctor can check to make sure it isn’t something else.  How does that sound?”

***

As someone forced to listen to Christmas music against my will, I’ve more or less trained myself to tune it out.  The last day I worked before Christmas, I was thinking about how soon I’d just have to tune out the normal bland music, when I joking thought about people having withdrawal symptoms from quitting Christmas music cold turkey.  The original version had someone call the doctor and the doctor telling them to listen to “Frosty the Snowman” twice and call them in the morning, along the lines of the old joke of “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” But how often do you actually talk to the doctor when you call the doctor’s office?  In addition, I wasn’t sure where exactly Christmas music fit in the range of things that you should quit cold turkey and what you should wean yourself off of.  I just wanted to make a silly little joke, but then I had to try to be realistic about it.

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