"It all started a day like this, a winter Tuesday" The old man sited on his old rocking chair, contemplating the winter afternoon.

"Grandpa, today is Saturday. And winter ended two weeks ago." said the little boy in short shorts and a Transformer's T-shirt, he was about to leave and play water balloon wars, but first he had to listen to the same old story, maybe this time it would be interesting.

"Well, then it started a winter Saturday. It was very cold and everyone in town was locked in their houses, and wore over twenty sweaters and made fires in every room, or course we didn't have all your technology of magic switches which make a room warm" he said, pointing to a complex system of house heating that had nothing of magical or new for that matter.

"Yes, yes, you have told me a hundred times how many babies even died of cold, and they needed someone to take the lumber to every house and..." said the anxious boy, who for some reason was waiting until the end of the story to throw a water balloon at Eddie McMillan.

"Once you have your story you can tell it the way you want, let me continue. Well, as I was saying, it was really cold, some folks didn't even make it 'til spring. It was awful, people were running out of lumber and no one was willing to go out there and get it" he was then interrupted, part because he forgot for a second and part because young Timmy knew the story already.

"Yes, and then you offered to do it and were the town's hero, and then you met..." the young boy was interrupted, taking sit, knowing this would take longer than usual

"Timmy, let your Grandfather continue his story, is the story of the family, you ought to know it" Timmy's mother said, as if it was some American History class.

"But mom, I know that story in fifteen different versions" Timmy said, quiet annoyed, yet he wanted to know the sixteenth

"As I was saying, it was a real atrocity in all the county, and so I offered to go house by house giving people the lumber they needed, you see pops was a wood chopper, as he always wanted me to be, but I dreamed of bigger and better. That was when I decided I wanted to be a house designer, but then the turns of life..." he began to ramble as he was interrupted yet again

"Grandpa, please don't deviate into another story. We were talking about the winter you met Grandma" Timmy said.

"Right, so, I was the only boy in all town that went house to house selling the wood chunks, and at first my mother was against it, but later she saw how much I made with that little job, the lord knows that woman was a Saint, but we needed to make ends meet. So I went every day in my bicycle, door to door giving them the wood. People were very nice to me, of course I was saving their behinds from freezing, but nevertheless they were really nice, treated me as their hero." Grandpa Lou said, tears coming from his wrinkled and heroic cheeks.

"And then, one day, I had to go to a house were I had never been before. It was on the upper side of town, where they were all the rich houses that had lumber of their own. From neighbor to neighbor, shouting out from the windows it had came to my house the message. And so I took my basket of lumber, tied it in th bicycle and rode there. But what I didn't know was that in my way back the day before a tire was pinched with a nail or something in the way. The fact was that with the cold and the snow, I couldn't see or hear the tire." said the old man, remembering the facts as he could and dramatizing what he couldn't

"Now it's more believable, last time you said a wolf attacked you in the way..." said Timmy, remembering the unremembered drama.

"Shut up and listen. The thing was that in my way I started noticing how the tire was going low and the wind was whistling louder and the snow was rising. It was becoming more and more cold, and I could barely see the houses. I arrived by a miracle to the house I was supposed to and then I climbed out of my ride and knocked on the door. There was no answer, I could no longer feel my legs, and the I passed out" he said, not knowing this was the first time he was using cold as his cause of passing out, it had previously been lumber thieves, wolves or a histrionic fall from his bike

"I don't remember how, but when I woke up I was surrounded by a family with worried faces and a dog barking. The lumber basket was beside the fireplace and I was sitting in a kitchen. And as I tried hard to assure everyone I was fine, I saw her, I saw the must beautiful woman my eyes would ever meet. It was love at first sight, and I knew I was going to marry her." he said, remembering the past. Past alway messes up with the present, or is it vie versa?

"Then..." Grandpa Lou said, and was interrupted.

"Then you won her heart in the town's carnival in spring because you helped the circus reach town and in exchange the musicians played her favorite song at her window. Actually that was my favorite version, are you now telling us the real one?" Timmy said, because up until now, all he had heard were fantastic stories which ended with his Grandparents marrying in Tibet, or him fighting the mob for dear Clarice, non of those versions convincing enough.

"Let Lou tell his story Timmy, you have all your life to build the truth" she said

"I thought fiction was the one build, truth just was" Timmy said, learning a new lesson that day. Or so it goes

"When it comes to memories it makes no difference" said old wrinkled Grandpa Lou, sounding for once all wise and sane. Then he went back to his story "Well, you're right, I saved the fair and everyone was just too happy about it. But not even then did she even look at me, to be honest I never remember her looking at me, we just ended married because his father went to bankruptcy years later and I was the only one who proposed" he said, looking at the air as if every inhaling he was breathing was the news of someone's dead.

"Mom... what is grandpa saying?" asked little Timmy, scared that the story was not including stories of mysterious wedding rings.

"And every night I could hear her cry until her sleep, and every night it broke my heart I couldn't give her what she wanted. It tore me into pieces knowing that she was unhappy, that the only woman I ever loved was miserable. The we had kids, I thought that would make her better, but she only sunk more. Then she was diagnosed cancer, and now what was killing her from the inside was also physical, and so she died, miserable, as she lived." said the man in the rocking chair, crying, crying for a wound that was buried deep into his wrinkled skin.

"Mom, what does Grandpa mean? Is this the real story?" asked a scared Timmy, crying too with that old storyteller. And scared mom took Timmy by the hand and walked him to the door

"Tim, go and play with your friends, everything is fine. He was just making up a story again, he didn't took the right pills today, he's fine. Now go play" she said, shredding tears.


[why are facts so important when we can choose fiction instead?]
By I'm the penguin