Dear Prudence

I like walking in cemeteries. They’re quiet. They’re pretty. They’re peaceful. What’s not to like?

This one time I went for a walk in a cemetery on my lunch break to prevent myself from becoming completely sedentary. I was moving from the old part of the cemetery towards the new, which was on the other side of a small hill. As I walked, a distant, echoing, rhythmic ringing broke the silence. It grew louder as I sauntered up the lonely path. I realized the ringing I heard was guitars now joined by a tambourine. Then there was a voice on the air. Was that… John Lennon I heard interrupting the quiet of this hallowed place? I looked all around me, searching for the source of the melancholy tune. I appeared to be alone. The music grew louder still as I approached the top of the hill, when the words “Dear Prudence, open up your eyes” sent a chill through me. Desperate to understand, I hurried to the crest of the hill and looked down. There stood an old gardener in coveralls working in a flowerbed. The door to his light blue, rusty old truck hung open and the music rang out over the whole place. I smiled to myself. It was simultaneously charming and eerie. Whatever it was, I liked it.

It instilled me with a new life dream. When I grow up, I’m going to be a cemetery caretaker and I’m going to listen to crazy cool music while I work and give a little thrill to inhabiting spirits and passers by. The End.