The Legless Shepherd

  Just before Christmas a year or two ago, (no, no, don't worry, I'm not going to get all poetic on you and start rambling about creatures stirring and houses...) My grandparents had picked me up from school so my parents could get some stuff done and then pick me up later. I worked on my homework until they called me for dinner, ate dinner, and then of course I went off to waste my evening playing games. Not too long afterward, my parents rang the door bell and came inside to wait in the warm house while I gathered my things. (I swear, every time I come home from school or anything I look like I'm running away from home with my home, because I have so much stuff.) I finally got my two coats, my computer, my lunchbox, my water and my backpack and came to the front door where everyone was talking. Of course, parental conversations are never short, so I wandered around the living room until I got bored enough to go look at yet another mini nativity scene set up on a table. The whole scene was fine and dandy, and all the little people were going about their everyday lives of doing absolutely nothing. All of them but one.
  I dropped my bags on the floor so I could take a closer look, and picked up the dying figurine of a shepherd. Unlike the others, he wasn't herding frozen sheep or watching the manger, he was laying on the snow-fluff flat on his back because he didn't have any legs.
"Grandma what happened to this guy?" I asked, "Oh, he got dropped and his legs broke off at the knees."
Indeed, he had but thigh stumps to run around herding sheep with. But no. This shepherd wasn't giving up yet. This guy was the Black Knight of shepherds. With his unmoving lips he was yelling at me, "I'm not dead yet!!"
  Some how in the process of falling and breaking, he had broken both his legs off at the knees, but his shepherd's staff had survived. I laughed. "Well, at least he can still use his staff!"