Just for the record, it's a real book (Amazon sells it, at least)
From the summary:
"Based on the 1946 movie that has become a holiday favorite, this brand new story is told from the point of view of Tommy Bailey, the youngest son of George and Mary Bailey (who were played by Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed). We follow Tommy from age four to age eleven as he and the familiar townspeople of Bedford Falls embody all the values of the film. During a time of crisis, an angel-in-training named Arthur shows Tommy how many lives he has touched during his few years on Earth, and that family and friends are what matter most."
Well, I don't care what's in the book for real. I saw the original movie (and the UCB's redub of it); I know what this book is about. I don't have the illustrations, but I can predict the text. With that in mind, sit back and enjoy what is obviously the classic children's story, "It's A Wonderful Life, For Kids!"
WARNING: I'm not going to preface this with a warning more specific than this statement. END WARNING.
It's A Wonderful Life,
For Kids!
I was a beautiful baby. At least that's what Mommy says. But she's probably just talking out her butt 'cause she knows that I'm a mix of hers and Daddy's DNA, so if she says I was an ugly baby, she'd have to admit that either she's ugly or she has no taste in men.
This is Mommy and Daddy. My opinion? Enh. Just thinking logically, I was an okay baby but I probably will have a speech impediment before I'm twelve.
Daddy's always been a hero of mine. Ever since I found out he saved his little brother from drowning. Yeah, that was basically the defining moment in his life, and he turned into a town hero. I wanted to be like Daddy so much, but I'm the youngest, so at age seven, I had to push my older sister Zuzu into the river and then jump in to save her.
Daddy pulled us both out before I had a chance though, and he got a medal. All I got was a paddling and no dessert for a week. Zuzu got double dessert for being so brave...and also because she told Daddy that stupid thing about angels getting their wings. She's totally been his favorite ever since then.
God, I hate Zuzu. You know what? I hate everybody in this stupid town. I live my life by the Bible or the Law or Morality or whatever it is we're all supposed to be living by, and nobody gives me credit for it. It's like Daddy's the only guy on God's green earth who matters in the slightest.
When Daddy gets a little tipsy on Saturdays, he sometimes sits me on his lap and tells me the story of how he found out that it's a wonderful life. The story mostly goes into how he's the only thing keeping this town from consuming itself, and that if it weren't for him, his brother'd be dead, some ship of soldiers'd've died in the war, Mommy'd be an old maid, and Miss Violet would be a prostitute. Oh, and an angel told him all of this. Daddy's a little self-important, but that's what happens when you heap praise on a kid; he gets heady.
There is one part of Daddy's stories I can relate to: he says he got this vision when he attempted suicide. Oh, he doesn't call it that; even Daddy's too upright a citizen to tell his son about self-destruction, but I'm smart, and it didn't take too much effort to connect the dots from "thinking out on the bridge...thinking" to "thinking...about jumping."
Well, darn it, it's time I got on with things. I'm not going to sit around for another decade of humdrum Pottersville life when I could just as easily jump off the bridge and get it over with. I don't mean 'think about' jumping off. No, I'm no coward like Daddy. I'll do it outright. Easy.
So here I am, on the bridge. It's cold, it's dark, and I'm probably missing out on our annual celebration of a Christmas miracle called "everybody who should have helped us earlier coming around with aid after Daddy secretly almost killed himself." Funny how those are all positives in my book.
I love winter nights. They make me forget about how the world's supposed to be such a happy place. When it's sunny, the whole town looks like a goshdarn sepia-tone photo. It's pathetic. Sunny days are supposed to be bright and cheerful and full of excitement. In Pottersville, they're full of obligatory casual greetings and standard errands.
I think of it being sunny like I think of being a good person: nobody around here expects anything less. The highest you can get on any deed, day or discussion in this town is a C because every shining example is just the norm. Pathetic.
Well, I'm falling below expectations now. I've got one foot dangling off a bridge over an icy river, and I'm supposed to have straightened my room before gramma comes over. Totally not done. Totally going to get paddled for that. Oh wait, no.
I'm not.
...Ow. What the hell? What did I land on? Ice? Ice?! The river froze?! I'm lying below a bridge on a frozen river?! You've got to be kidding me. I thought it was too quiet when I was up there; I guess it is pretty cold. After all, I've been out here, like, fifteen minutes and I already can't feel my legs. And it's so dark, I can barely see three feet in front of me, so I guess that explains it. Darn it. Gosh-double-shoot-darn it. I totally mucked that up. Now I'm going to have to stand up and go home all dirty and...stand up and...
Um. I can't...I can't move. I can't feel my legs, but I can't feel my arms either. Or anything below my shoulderblades really, except my heart. It's going pretty fast. Pretty darn fast.
Oh God, I'm going to die aren't I? I broke my back jumping off a bridge, and now I'm going to die of exposure because nobody's going to be able to walk out on a frozen river and save me; I can hear it cracking a little just from my hitting it.
Oh God, I want my Daddy.
"Hey, buster, you okay?"
There's a kid standing over me eating an ice cream. That simple fact, on a night when the wind chill puts it at probably close to the negatives, is enough to tell me he's an angel.
"You took a big fall, buster," he says. "Kinda stupid, dontcha think?"
"Yeah," I mumble. I'm suddenly glad I went to the bathroom before I came here or I'd have probably peed myself when my spine snapped. That'd've been too embarrassing.
"Well, buster," he says, "I'm Arthur, angel-in-training, seraphim-in-waiting, card-carrying member of the Anti-Desecration League. I can tell you've already got me pegged as a errandboy for the Lord (blessed be His Presence and His Name) all by yourself though, so let's get down to brass tacks: you just royally screwed up, buster."
He squats over me. "You know how good you had it? Do you? I guess not since you took the plunge without even having the decency to let me get down from heaven and talk to you first. But whatever. I don't get my wings until a bell rings, and no bells are gonna ring until you figure out how wonderful life is. Now let's go."
"If I go with you and learn my lesson, you're gonna take me back in time and show me what it would be like if I'd never been born, and then you'll take me back to before I jumped, and I can go home?" I'm babbling a little from delerium, frostbite and blind hope.
He licks his two-scoop again and looks at me. "Um no," he says. "You already jumped and shattered your Lucifer-damned fifth and sixth vertebrae. You're paralized from the chest down come Hell," --he spits-- "or high water...that last one's more likely, what with all these cracks in the ice."
"So where are we going?" I ask, the whole situation finally sinking in.
"Into your head for a fever dream," he says. "That's all you're gonna get in this state. Think of it as your unlife flashing before your eyes."
I nod and a couple of tears freeze halfway down my cheek as I lie back and wait for the inevitable.
It's sunny out in Pottersville. Only it's actually sunny. And it's bright. And warm.
"So...what?" I say. I'm a disembodied voice now, probably less depressing that way. "Without me, the sun would shine stronger?"
"No," Arthur says, standing in the sun in my line of sight, "the sun's just as bright as it always has been. We're looking at it without your doom-and-gloom filter turned on." He points across the street. Officers Ernie and Bert are saying their hellos to Gramma and they sound happy. "It's not all bland conversation," Arthur says, "some of it's actually pleasant. These people like each other."
The main street blurs and we're in my house. It's Saturday and Daddy's having a drink to relax at the end of a hard day. And another couple. Whoa, we watch him on fast forward, and two hours later, he's wasted. Completely trashed.
"What the heck's he doing, Arthur?" I demand. "Wait, is he drinking himself stupid because he couldn't save me?"
"No," Arthur says, "You're not dead in this vision; the point is you never existed. Your dad's getting soused because he's got nobody to tell his story to."
"What story," I scoff, "his Wonderful Life story with his made-up ange..." I stop.
Arthur looks at where I'd be standing if I were corporeal. "Your dad tells you about what happened to him that night he almost offed himself for a couple really good reasons. The first one's not going on here, since you're dead, and that's the fact that he's been trying to head you off at the pass since you were 6, trying to keep you from making the same mistake he did, trying to kill yourself to escape the world."
"And what's the other reason?" I ask.
"The one you're seeing here?" Arthur says. "Well, the other reason is he feels like he needs to tell it to somebody, and he feels he has to keep up his sappy-sweet lopsided-smile act for the entire rest of the world. You know, you can go to jail for attempted suicide?"
"What?" I say. "But that's stupid!"
"Yeah," he says, "well, I guess they don't want you jumping off a building and killing somebody when you land on them. Whatever, it's mortal law. Not like it matters anyway."
We watch Daddy in silence for a couple more minutes as he quietly tries to kill the brain cells that remember him ever thinking his life anything less than perfect. Then it's time to press on, and he blurs away.
It's Mommy. She's playing a slot machine in a smoky bar while some sketchy man with a cold sore sucks on her neck and fondles her bottom. If I had a stomach right now, I'd be vomiting.
"What. Is this," I manage.
Arthur hops up to sit on the bar next to Mommy. "Your mom was a bookish uppity snoot before your dad met her. But once he'd gotten into her head, she got a little more relaxed and more willing to have fun. A little," --he gestured at the bag of quarters in her lap-- "too much fun maybe. But her kids have always been her focus. Notice how she always seemed to have a kid every few years until after you? It was because she took care of each kid whole-heartedly until she felt they were ready to handle themselves, and then she'd get restless and she'd have another kid with your dad to keep herself steady and responsible. And she stopped after you 'cause you've never reached that point, and she's been stuck on the verge of losing it ever since. Only..." --and now we are fast-forwarding through the rest of Mommy's evening-- "Only here, she never had you, and she fell out of responsibility and into this schmuck's arms."
We watch for a little longer, but I don't learn anything more about myself. More about Mommy, yes. Unfortunately. I think Arthur might be kind of dawdling for personal reasons, what with his whole neutered existence or whatever. Mommy is between the guy's legs when I finally yell, "Arthur! Arthur! Help me, Arthur. Get me back. Get me back. I don't care what happens to me. Get me back to my Mommy and Daddy like they're supposed to be. Help me, Arthur, please. Please! I want to live again! I want to live again. I want to live again. Please, God, let me live again."
And here I am, on my back on the ice in the cold. Thanks a lot, Arthur, I think. I really had been thinking he'd been joking about leaving me with a shattered spine; I mean, angels are supposed to help people, right? Of course, he's just an angel-in-training, so he's still learning, I guess.
My teeth aren't chattering any more; that's got to be a bad sign. There's voices way off in the distance. They're looking for me. Oh, perfect, I think. This is God's gift to me: my friends and family looking over the edge and seeing me in all my failed-suicidal humiliation. The miracle of life and the miracle of lifelong regret over my trying to take my life. I'll wind up in a mental ward until I'm 60, I'll be That Guy Whom You've Got To Be Careful What You Say To Or He'll Kill Himself, I'll be unwanted and unloved for the rest of...
Hold up...what's what's going on? I'm...holy sun-of-a-gun funky shoot, I'm floating! I'm goshdarn levitating off the ice and floating! What the heck? What is going...
I'm now floating upright and upward, my dead weight hanging below me as I go back over the guardrail and stop a couple inches from the snow-covered pavement of the bridge. I hover there, as if standing erect. I wonder how long I'll stay here like this, how long it will take for the search party to get here, and what they'll say when they see me floating against all reason here in the middle of the bridge. How will they explain it? Will I be a miracle returned to them from God? Will I be able to float forever? Am I a superhero now, like Clark KUUUUUNGHF!
The drunk driver hits me going at forty miles an hour, and I break his windshield before richocheting off and nearly going over the side of the bridge again before the levitation snatches me sideways a little and instead I just strike my head on a girder and pass out, with the sound of a harsh, insistent ringing in my ears.
They say they found me an hour later, lying there, cruelly crushed by the idiocy of some guy who lost control for a single moment...oh and also because he was a lifelong lush, constantly out of control. He's in rehab now. Probably with an angel-in-training standing behind him, helping him stave off his personal demons day after day.
As for me, I'm in a wheelchair. Mommy feeds me, changes me, and --I admit it--dotes a little. I'm a little damaged obviously, but no worse than what I'd done to myself. It appears that by some Christmas miracle that only I can appreciate, God kept me from being harmed at all by the car. Everything I've got, I got in the fall. Miraculous.
So yeah, a little damaged, like I said. My faith a little shaken, my world a little twisted...I get through it with my Daddy.
He's the only one who knows. I'd seen it in his eyes when he'd sat over me in the ambulance; Christmas eve, that bridge, the last few years of his hoping it wouldn't happen... he's a banker, he can put two and two together just fine. So now when he sits me on his lap Saturdays, it's not a story time any more, and he's never tipsy.
We talk about what it was like to see the other side, why our family seems to have a history of divine intervention, what it had taken to drive us to suicide, what made us survive in the end, and he hugs me, and I press my chin hard against his shoulder, and I know.
It's a wonderful life.
THE END.
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