ABC After School Special Kid

ABC Afterschool Special Kid

By Jason Goldtrap, November 12, 2020

Hi. I'm the ABC Afterschool Special Kid. I'm just like you expect I'm in a wheelchair and I'm blind and deaf and I have A.I.D.S., which is hard to fight due to my anorexia. My parents are getting a divorce and I'm homeless and my Dad's in prison, my Mom's an alcoholic, and I'm being bullied because I'm an African-American who dances ballet.

I am running for class President while experimenting with marijuana even though I'm secretly an undercover cop who stole the answers to tomorrow's big exam and I'm the only one who stutters but not when I'm ice dancing around the wounded deer I found in the woods.

My girlfriend wants to be on the Little League team but she can't get away from her secret life of being an overweight, dyslexic, illiterate, Muslim, teen singing sensation who is giving birth to a mixed race Crack baby covered in birthmarks and she's actually a dude but I'm comforted by my guardian angel disguised as a retired Jewish circus clown.

We both became accidentally launched aboard the Space Shuttle where we showed the astronauts and their guests the Harlem Globetrotters that you don't have to be pretty to succeed while helping them set up a non religious and allergy sensitive, Christmas tree that can be recycled.

Beware Story Bear this Christmas

Rivergate Mall: Story Bear

By Jason Goldtrap 2003

Be vigilant this Yuletide season for an enormous, fury ogre I first encountered at Rivergate Mall in Nashville, Tennessee, 1991. I was a clerk at a jewelry stand; ready for my 9am to 9pm shift.  It was a frosty November morning in Music City. Retirees were strolling past the Cheese Barn. Good–natured, tattooed men with criminal records were emptying the trash. All the world was at peace when what to my wandering eyes did appear but an 18 foot tall, gray furred Story Bear.

He loomed over the fountain squared court in front of the JC Penny’s, wearing a green bow tie and a red Santa’s cap, complete with chromium blue eyes that eerily followed you in a mishmash of Charles Dickens and George Orwell.  And then its voice blared from a dozen wreath laden speakers: “Hello, I’m Story Bear”. He spoke in a warbling, Barney Fife-esque vocalization. “Would you like to hear a story? One time, I saw Santa Claus.” He began singing “Up on the roof top” in an  off key tenor with a slow, plodding beat-  reminiscent of a cow dying from a bowel obstruction.

The most hypnotic aspect of Story Bear was that both his mouth and eyelids were wildly out of sync. At no point, not even by accident, did they match. Even between the blessed but brief pauses between songs, the robot’s jaw just continued opening and closing.

“Can I be your friend? I like having friends. Feliz Navidad”- an attempt to make sure the audio water-boarding was multicultural.

After a seemingly endless abomination of the “12 Days of Christmas” the show abruptly ended. For 60 seconds, there is serenity and employees of The Gap or the Great American Cookie Company could breathe easy, until the nightmarish nineteen minute show started again, meaning, they were treated to this musical, sugar plum homicide twenty-seven times a day.  Each second, the clock would tick tock closer to that magical New Year’s morning, when the evil ursine  is disassembled and crated back to Perdition from whence it came.

In conclusion, if you see Story Bear at your local mall be afraid, be very, very afraid

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