COLUMN: Mistletoe memories still making the rounds

There are times when I long to be young again.

If I was 14 years old, I wouldn’t fall asleep in my chair watching television. If I went back to being a freckle-faced 10, I could eat four McDonald’s hamburgers and not have to fret when I stepped on the bathroom scales. If I was 12, I wouldn’t have to deal with arthritis in my lower back. (Or pronounce Ibuprofen.) 

Then again, I’m not convinced I would want to repeat the eighth grade. Been there. Done that. Survived algebra and Robinson Crusoe. Earned the hormones diploma.

Eighth grade is among the most awkward of ages. Your first pimple shows up on your chin. You’re too young to get a job or drive a car. You’re too cool to believe in Santa Claus.

We moved to Atlanta when I was in the eighth grade. It was tough being the new kid at school. I sat by myself in the lunch room until I made new friends.

One of them was Kim. He now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and we stay in touch. His daughter recently got married. His birthday is next week.   

Back in the day, Kim and I would take pellet guns into the woods behind his house for target practice. We didn’t hunt birds or rabbits, though. We shot down mistletoe from the tops of the trees.

Mistletoe was a fungus that grew on the upper branches. We couldn’t reach it with a ladder, lasso it with a rope or knock it off with a slingshot, like David taking down Goliath.

For a couple of 14-year-old boys, shooting at the stars was the only way to harvest it.

I have to laugh about it now. I’m not sure what we knew what to do with it anyway.  

Although we had started to notice girls, we had no clue what to do next. Swapping slobber with young ladies under a clump of poisonous green leaves was a rather unrealistic expectation.

It wasn’t until the 10th grade that I discovered a game of “Spin the Bottle” was more fun than aiming at tall trees.

Mistletoe has been making folks pucker up for hundreds of years … a holiday aphrodisiac dangling in an open doorway. 

How many romances started with a kiss on the cheek beneath the mistletoe? How many of those flames are still burning or found their way into the script of a Hallmark Christmas movie?

Mistletoe isn’t a big deal with younger generations. Millennials, Gen Zs and Alphas dismiss it as hopelessly old-fashioned. After all, they’ve got dating apps.

I still catch a glimpse of the greenery during the holidays, and I must admit I still look for patches of it on bare branches framed against the sky. After the autumn leaves drop from the trees onto our lawns and into our gutters, you can see clumps of it in the boughs.

Several years ago, the city of Macon planted Hornbuckle trees along the curbs on our street. There was a small gathering of mistletoe on one of our trees,  about 7 feet off the ground. 

It’s nice to have farm-to-table without standing on my tip toes. Low-hanging fruit.

We are in the throes of decorating the house on this wet weekend, so I went outside Saturday morning and plucked some amorous foliage.

 I might have to steal a kiss real soon. I know the perfect girl.