keyword "found" title "by george" in misc. flash fiction

We’re all just snow in the air, melting on the ground when we get there, just like George Bailey. George just wanted to build buildings, George wanted to just see the world, George thought he might just find himself a girl. That’s all the man wanted.

George got himself a steamer case and wanted to coat its face with stamps from places seemingly imaginary then, some of which by now we’ve bombed to smithereens. George wasn’t even given a chance to get to Erie County and watch the Buffalo Girls dance, George dove deep into the ice from the very start, lost hearing in one ear so he couldn’t hear his heart, calling out to the million places not Bedford Falls and even if he beat Potter now, Potter’s kids would just tear down their savings-and-loan to build malls or McMansions with high walls. When face to face with George, God just said, “You get this life I gave you or you get nothing at all.”

George married his best friend’s second-hand, George got his father’s burden when he died, the demons of commerce and angels from heaven, they nailed him up to Bedford Falls and left him crucified, not high hill on some Roman mound but rather to maintain the life-support on a dying town, melting as it hit the ground, just like George Bailey.

God wouldn’t end his town, money was found to for a few short years save the town but that’s no happy ending, I want a middle ground. I just know that I would be a better God than the one who nailed George up to melt on down.

I’d send him to Baghdad before we blew it up, send him to California to help build neat stuff, to New York or to Taipei, I’d let him choose for himself if he wanted to return to Bedford someday, not tell him that it’s this or George, you don’t get to exist and for God’s sake not on Christmas.

Did you ever see the Muppet special “Emmett Otter’s Christmas Jugband”? That’s better holiday cheer to keep around on-hand, there’s a talent competition taken upon by Emmett and his friends, a flashy group of city-slickers swoop in to win it but the Emmett Jugband, they take second in the end, second prize is a weekly gig performing at the Puppettown Café. They get to make a bit of money, they get to sing and play, the kind of happy ending I’d set for George Bailey were I a god today. That’s the Christmas wish I have for you, a wish I have for myself too, we only get a little time here on Earth, fragile little snowflakes that we are, we deserve some time to sing and roam this little Earth while guided by close-up hearts and distant stars.

And yes, so did George Bailey. We’re a little bit of snow in the air and melting on the ground when we get there, just like George Bailey.