HUMBOLDT PARK — Here’s some holly, jolly news to get you in the holiday spirit: the guy who was hit by the Christmas Bus is going to be fine! When the festively decorated CTA bus bound up Western Ave. made an unexpected stop on top of Fred Bailey, 36, a tourist visiting our fair city from Cleveland, Ohio, his friends and family probably thought “Ho ho, oh no!” but he’s fine! It’s truly a Christmas Miracle!
We all love the CTA’s Christmas themed trains and busses and even if you don’t seek them out as they travel the rails and streets of Chicago, you might be lucky enough to see one accidentally! That must make Bailey an especially lucky guy, because he not only had a chance sighting of the Christmas bus as he crossed the street, but it also passed over his body, crushing him! When Bailey stepped out for lunch with his fiance, Georgia Carter, 34, a school teacher back in their native Cleveland, he probably didn’t think he was going to be part of a Christmas Miracle, but tis the season!
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Witnesses to the accident and subsequent miracle said the whole thing played out exactly like the holiday classic “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” only instead of a sweet old granny being bowled over by one of Santa’s enthusiastic pets, it was a man being fully run over by a bus. Onlookers were certain that Bailey’s halls had been fully decked, but it turns out he’s going to be fine after extensive medical treatment.
“Ho ho ho!” said Nicholas Lentz, a PR Representative for the CTA with rosy cheeks and a belly that shakes like a bowl of jelly when he laughs, “we are always pleased with the public’s joyous response to our holiday trains and busses! I got a twinkle in my eye when I heard that Mr. Bailey was going to be fine, even though he’d been fully crushed by that merry ol’ bus! The paramedics were able to make a list, check it twice, and find all those body parts that were blown off by the initial impact. We wish him ‘happy holidays’ and a cringly-jingly recovery!”
With a wink of his eye, Lentz put his finger to his nose and refused to take any further questions pending the investigation. What a merry press conference it was!
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“I’m just so happy that he’s fine,” said Carter, sipping from a mug of hot cocoa, “to think, I was just a single school teacher living in Ohio who’d given up on her dreams of finding true love only to meet Freddy, fall in love, quickly get engaged, and then come to Chicago to witness a real Christmas miracle! I’m just so blessed to have this happy, holiday-themed ending!”
Bailey, who has been placed in a cryogenic coma till science advances enough to fix “flat torso,” is going to be fine! Till then he’s a regular ol’ “Frosty the Snowman,” only instead of a magic hat keeping him alive, it’s a computer system wired into his frozen brain.
