Large Print Short Stories for Seniors Collection

The Christmas Tape Nobody Meant to MakeThe portable cassette recorder arrived at the Bellamy house three days before Christmas, in a box showing a serious man recording a bird.Perry Bellamy had bought it for his wife, Linnea, because she often said the children were growing up too quickly.“Now you can preserve their voices,” the salesman had explained.Perry imagined orderly recordings labeled Christmas 1976 and Important Family Thoughts.He did not imagine his twelve-year-old daughter, Calista, discovering the recorder in the hall closet before it was wrapped.Calista pressed the red button.The machine clicked, hummed, and began collecting the household.First, it recorded Calista whispering, “Testing, testing,” followed by her brother Boyd shouting from upstairs that she had taken his striped socks.Then came Linnea in the kitchen, asking who had eaten the cherries intended for the fruitcake.“Not me,” Boyd called.“You are still chewing,” Linnea replied.Calista carried the recorder from room to room like a reporter. She interviewed the cat, who declined to comment, recorded the washing machine, and stood outside the bathroom while Perry practiced “O Come, All Ye Faithful” in a key unavailable to the rest of the family.When footsteps approached, Calista panicked. She slid the recorder beneath the sofa, forgot to press Stop, and went upstairs.For the next four hours, the machine listened patiently.It captured the sound of wrapping paper crackling at the dining table. Perry muttered about adhesive tape that refused to cut. Linnea reminded him that scissors had been invented for difficult occasions.At six, Aunt Rosamund arrived carrying a gelatin salad shaped like a church bell. The front door slammed. Boots crossed the floor. Someone dropped a bag of oranges.“Mind the sofa,” Linnea warned.No one minded the sofa.