In Closing: Fah Who For-aze, Dah Who Dor-aze

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Well, that was fun! Let's close it out with some Dr. Seuss:

Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer.
Cheer to all Whos far and near.
Christmas Day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be
Just as long as we have we.
Welcome, Christmas, while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand.

Merry Christmas!

Day 12: The Most Ridiculous Thing I've Ever Done

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Early in the grade school years, at my birthday party in February, my friend Andy gave me the space Lego set Shuttle Craft. And so it began. Space Legos were the perfect toy for me -- I have a gift for three-dimensional awareness, I was starting to become mystified with astronauts and outer space, and there was something magical about the way that just a few hundred nondescript little blocks could transform into something much more than the sum of their parts, and in an infinite variety of ways.

My Lego collection grew rapidly, but my hunger for Legos grew at an even higher rate. I had already taken to studying the Lego catalog as my bedtime reading, and there simply weren't enough events in the year where I was guaranteed to get more Legos. One year in March, with my birthday just behind me, I realized that it would be Christmas before I could expect to receive more Legos. But my Lego mania knew no bounds, and December was further away than I could stand to wait.

On a sunny March afternoon, I sat down at home at my little wooden desk, took out a sheet of red construction paper and some Crayola crayons, and wrote a letter to Santa Claus. In true kindergartener fashion, this letter obeyed no rules of letter writing. Most of the letter consisted of the list of Lego sets that I wanted for Christmas; when I ran out of room wherever I was writing, I found a blank spot on the page and continued with the next item on the list. But this wasn't merely a wish list. I told Santa that I couldn't wait until Christmas, and I did so with these words:

"SEND THEM NOW OR I'LL BLAST YOU!"

That's right, I made a threatening bluff to Santa Claus, just because I didn't want to wait nine months for Christmas to arrive. So when I handed this letter to Mom and asked her to mail it to the North Pole...what could she have thought? I mean, perhaps it's funny now, but if your supposed little angel threatens a munificent stranger who brings joy to kids all around the world...out of mere impatience...I mean, how the hell are you supposed to deal with that?

Mom probably did the best thing -- she took the letter and told me she mailed it. Then about a month later, Mom suggested to me that maybe it wasn't very nice for me to have threatened Santa like that, and that perhaps I owed Santa an apology. Overcome with the feeling that I may have screwed myself out of presents, I sat down to write Santa another letter, this one on light blue construction paper. I apologized to Santa for threatening him, and I told him I could wait until Christmas to get my presents. Then I used the rest of the sheet of paper to list all of the other Lego sets I hadn't been able to fit into the first letter.

Shortly thereafter, my parents told me the secret of Santa Claus (his suit is laser-proof), probably so they didn't have to deal with this shit anymore. And as we know, that went well.

Day 11: The Snapparellas

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Throughout my whole life, Dad has been an anchor to me in the cognitive sense, because he serves as my first estimate of where I may end up, and who I may become, in the future. Dad's a lawyer, so in seventh grade when Mr. Downey gave us an assignment to write descriptions of our life at various distances into the future, I naturally decided that I would have become a lawyer, too. (I think I did my undergraduate work at Princeton before moving on to Harvard Law. Go ahead, it's okay to laugh.)

Dad is also quite the storyteller, so that's something I've always shot for as well. I try, but it turns out I'm more like the Horace Grant of entertainment -- I'm usually good for a tip-in at a critical moment, but I'm not going to average 30 points per game or knock down six 3-pointers in one half. Maybe storytelling is just one of those things that skips a generation. And I'm okay with that. Dad is a great storyteller. I still have all my hair.

Dad's best storytelling was something that no one outside our immediate family ever got to hear. Dad had created a family named the Snapparellas, and as our family grew, so did the Snapparellas. As our family comprised me, Ben, Teddy, and Allison, our respective counterparts in the Snapparella family were Snoopy, Snappy, Rooty, and Zooty. (In a very "Peanuts"-like sense, I'm not sure we ever encountered Mr. or Mrs. Snapparella.)

The Snapparella kids were not the most socially adept. At one point Dad drew a series of cartoons, similar to "Goofus & Gallant", that highlighted the differences between us. For example, one cartoon showed me swinging a 9-iron, with the caption, "Robin goes for the green in two." The opposite panel had a similar caption, "Snoopy goes for the green in two," showing Snoopy with a finger up each nostril.

Listening to stories about the Snapparellas became a holiday tradition for our family. Each winter, we would have a few nights in the lead up to Christmas where we kids would each grab a blanket and stake out some space on a couch in the family room; Mom and Dad would put on a pot of coffee and dim the lights; and Dad would spend close to an hour telling one chapter of that year's story of our family and the Snapparellas. The centerpiece of the tale was usually Snoopy's annual attempt to catch Santa Claus.

Snoopy obviously never learned the secret of Santa (that he has bodyguards, whom he considers expendable -- seriously, the most important person on the planet is really going to jump down a billion chimneys and not have someone else go in first?), but that didn't stop Snoopy from concocting some rather amazing traps over the years, things that put Wile E. Coyote to shame. One year Snoopy used miles and miles of string, not just to set trip wires all over the house but so that when anyone was caught, everything in the house that could possibly make noise would go off at once. I don't remember exactly how this plan fell apart, but it wouldn't surprise me if a household pet were involved.

Mom adds: "What I liked was how Dad would think out the stories in detail ahead of time and he would leave a cliff-hanger for the next night. But what I really thought was cool was you and Ben (maybe Teddy, too, although I think Dad may have stopped telling the stories by then) would try to guess and tell your own versions of what was happening in the story."

Snoopy carried out so many plans that I have a hard time separating them in my memories from the general ridiculousness of all the cartoons I watched. (Did Snoopy really ice down the roof of the house so the reindeer would skid off when landing?) But there must really be something to the mystique of trying to catch Santa. On Christmas Eve in 1986, when Teddy was just four-and-a-half years old, he woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Teddy decided that he would catch Santa on his way back to bed. He finished up in the bathroom, and then headed right back to bed, completely forgetting what he had intended to do. It turned out to be his last chance, because the very next year, Teddy learned the truth about Santa (he knows when you're on the can).

Day 10: While You Were Sleeping

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On Christmas Day a few years ago, while Allison was still in high school, one of her friends -- a boy -- came over to the house to give her a present. As the white room (capitalized?) served not only as our center of Christmas operations but also as, well, the room with what was technically our front door, the rest of us retreated from the room when Allison's friend arrived to give them some privacy. All of us, that is, except for Dad. No, he wasn't being overly protective like Teddy and I were. Dad was asleep.

I should point out that this kid was a friend of Allison's boyfriend, so even though he obviously had a crush on her, nothing was going on in that room. He gave her a toy from a Pixar film, they chatted for a while, he left. All the more reason why it was so wrong, later, for Teddy and even Mom to riddle Dad with innuendo about what had taken place in that room while he was asleep.

Mom: "I can't believe you were sleeping right there the whole time."
Dad: "Wait, a boy came over to give Allison a present?"
Teddy: "Oh, he gave her something, all right."

This went on for a while. I'm trying to get them to stop: "Come on, this isn't right...it's his little girl...I mean, it's--"

And then something in my head clicked. "Dad...Dad...I'll tell you what he gave her."

"He gave her the one-eyed monster."

Day 9: Early To Bed And Early To Rise

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It is now four sleeps until Christmas. Wait, don't I mean days? No, I mean sleeps. I realized long ago that the most difficult part of waiting until Christmas wasn't the days, during which I could play with my brothers, but it was having to clear my mind and fall asleep each night. Thinking about the Lego sets or Sega Genesis games I was hoping to receive, well, it kept me up at night! So I was painfully aware of how many times I needed to conquer those thoughts and get to sleep.

On the last day, Christmas Eve, I would find my excitement peaking, and the puzzle-solver in me realized that if I could achieve that last sleep earlier, Christmas Day would effectively arrive sooner. So I started to go to bed early on Christmas Eve. Really early. What was surprising about this is that it actually worked -- as I resolved to do, I did fall asleep earlier. What was not surprising is that, as a consequence of falling asleep earlier, I also woke up earlier. Much earlier.

Like everyone has, at one time or another I've made the joke, "I didn't know there was a five-o'clock in the morning." The truth is, of course I knew there was a five-o'clock in the morning, I just didn't know it was soooooo long. What was I supposed to do at 5:00am on Christmas morning? I couldn't do anything that made noise, because I would wake people up, and as a kid I had very few things in my repertoire that didn't involve making noise. So I did the only thing I could think of: I read. And what I decided to read was the dinosaur book.

Our dinosaur book -- out of print, but if you're interested, ISBN 9780307137647 -- stands out because of its vivid drawings; its timeline at the bottom of each page that, across the entire book, spans the entire Mesozoic Era; and its depiction of all dinosaurs as cold-blooded...yeah, so it's a little dated. It seems it has just the right amount of science nerdage to keep me mildly captivated through the entire book...which would take me a surprisingly long time to get all the way through. Perhaps I would daydream in the middle of the T-rex battle scene.

These days I still get teased on Christmas Eve -- "It's 9:30, shouldn't you be in bed?" -- and on Christmas Day, Mom may ask whether I read the dinosaur book. I keep it at my place these days, so when I'm out at Mom and Dad's for Christmas, I don't have that option. If I want reading material, I have to choose from among whatever has accumulated at the house over the years -- classic literature and books on programming. Hmmm...maybe Allison has something I could borrow. Harry Potter once fought a dinosaur, right?

Day 8: Whose Turn Is It?

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When we kids were younger, and Christmas was still mostly about the presents, Santa made sure that each one of us received just about the same number of presents. This allowed us to open presents one at a time, and to go in order, and remain balanced throughout the day. One year I even noticed that my presents were discreetly labeled "R1", "R2", and so on, presumably so Santa could keep count.

(This seems like a good point to mention that Santa Claus obviously believes in making every Christmas a Green Christmas. Santa has one of the most comprehensive recycling programs the world has ever seen, in which decorative shirt boxes and other hard packaging materials are reused year after year. This was most apparent the time that I received a present that had "B11" marked in the bottom corner. Even wrapping paper is passed down from year to year, being used for a slightly smaller package each time, when the present opener preserves the paper. I tend to do this, and sometimes it means I spend 15 or 20 seconds unwrapping a gift. Teddy responds to this by finding the biggest present he can and staring at me while he tears the paper to shreds in two seconds.)

With a balanced number of gifts for each kid, it was natural for us to pick an order and stick to it. To this day we still go roughly from youngest to oldest, although Mom and Dad are part of the regular rotation now. In fact, I think Dad gets more presents than anyone these days -- easiest to amuse means easiest to shop for.

We've changed things up over the years, but most often we each open one present before breakfast -- usually this is around 10:30am, once everyone has woken up/showered/arrived -- then do the rest of the presents after breakfast, followed by stockings at some point later in the day. Mom told us that when she was growing up, Santa left their stockings in their bedrooms so they could go through them as soon as they woke up, but I like stockings at the end -- it's like a cool-down period, not too many surprises. Even though Santa wraps just about everything, even in the stockings, we kids often get the same things -- "Mmmm, chocolate Santa." "Yep, got one of those already." -- or things that are really obvious -- "Sweet, contact lens solution!"

If we get too off-track during the opening of presents, Mom will chime in with, "Whose turn is it?" (The odds of Mom saying this on Christmas are even greater than the odds of Mom saying, "I'm sorry you didn't get any Legos this year, but, you know, you didn't ask for any!") When Mom asks, "Whose turn is it?" she is really saying one of two things:

1. "I know it must be one of you kids' turn, but even if I knew which one of you it was, it would take me three tries to say the right name, so just figure it out on your own and go grab a present."
2. "Dad, we handed you a present two minutes ago, before you started telling this story, and it's still sitting unopened in your lap. Please open it."
   

When the unopened presents start to dwindle in number, Mom sometimes regroups them by recipient, which is really so she can direct things to make sure that everyone opens his or her last present together, in the last round. Family lore tells that Teddy receives fewer presents than anyone else, but I think this is blown out of proportion because of the one year in which, after a Mom gift regrouping, there were more presents left for the dog than there were for Teddy. (In fairness to Teddy, the dog hadn't started yet.)

++++

My many years as a certified math nerd (a phrase which returns 9 exact hits on Google) allow me to state that the odds of two parents and four kids making it through over two decades of Christmases without anyone being very sick at the time...those odds can be precisely quantified as "ain't happening." On that note, I'll turn it over to Allison:

"One of my favorite stories is the time Teddy had the flu on Christmas. Ben got out of the shower and walked out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, and Teddy didn't think he could make it to the bathroom in time, so he said, 'Ben, give me your towel,' and Ben goes, 'No, what are ya, goofy?' and then Teddy proceeded to throw up on the floor right in front of him. Ben had just recently gotten his video camera, though, so he filmed the whole day of us unwrapping presents so Teddy could watch it while he unwrapped his that night, once he was feeling better."

Day 7: You Will Eat Way Too Much Food...In Bed

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As the Grinch learned, Christmas doesn't come from a store. And it's a warm feeling to give a gift that someone will enjoy, when that gift can't be found in any store. In this sense, some of the best presents I've been able to give have been Mom's cookies.

Each winter when I was growing up, Mom made about three freezers of cookies. I've since learned that a "freezer" is not an internationally-accepted unit of volume, but let's just say that Mom would make several dozen...of each of perhaps 10 different types of cookies. Molasses, peanut butter, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin. Those chocolate cookies that are spooned out in balls but flatten as they bake, producing a cracked powdered sugar finish. The sugar/butter cookies in multiple cookie-cutter shapes. Peppermint cookies that actually have two pink- and white-colored strips wound around each other like a candy cane. My all-time favorite, almond ball cookies. And fudge...I'm talking about real, you-may-want-to-sit-down fudge.

Mom would put a few of a particular cookie into a baggie, then pack several baggies of different cookies into a Christmas-themed paper bag or foil tray. Decorative ribbon? You bet. Each teacher, for any of us kids, got a package, and if you were a principal, receptionist, coach, or teacher's aide, you usually scored a mini-tray of your own. As I got older, I started making the recipients list myself, and it grew each year. My senior year of high school, in addition to my teachers, I gave cookies to the school nurses, the counselors' assistants, the librarians, and the captains of the soccer team. Even when I got my first real job, in Fort Wayne, I went home a week or two before Christmas so I could bring back cookies for my bosses.

Every thank-you note read exactly the same way: "Thanks to you and your mom for the delicious cookies! I ate every last one of them the very first night."

The only reason I personally focused on quantity is because I already knew they were sinfully awesome. The question was how many Mom would let me have. Per day.

++++

Tonight we're going to Little Szechwan!

Almost every year, usually just a few days before Christmas, our family has dinner at Little Szechwan. We get several dishes, which we all share, and which we choose based on a combination of (1) our imperfect memories of what we liked before, (2) a desire for variety and balance, and (3) whatever sounds really good. Perennial favorites include beef with orange peel and kung bao shrimp, and we usually decide on everything else and then order a mu shu appetizer with whichever meat we didn't cover in our other dishes. The appetizers usually also include potstickers and, recently, those mini barbecue ribs. Maybe two orders of the ribs. The best name for a dish, in my mind, was Men Chu Beef -- Ben once picked this out from the specials menu, but I can't recall what it tasted like. Teddy still mocks me for once ordering a fish item. Wasn't that with the ginger sauce? That was pretty good!

While they've never served us a duck that was still smiling, Little Szechwan was where I first discovered green tea, warm towels, and fru-fru drinks (back in the day, Dad might order a mai tai). And it could have been at Little Szechwan that Allison had to explain to Mom the right way to read the fortune in a fortune cookie.

Shrimp with velvet sauce is sounding awfully good right now.

Day 6: 'Tis Better To Give

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For years, Mom has attempted to motivate us by saying, "If Santa doesn't get a list from you, he probably won't bring you anything for Christmas." In the extreme, I think it was either Teddy or Allison that once gave Mom a Christmas wish list so long it required a staple. I'm not sure which of these practices came about first -- perhaps it's like the chicken and the egg. But Dad made it incredibly easy for Santa by declaring each year that all he wanted for Christmas was socks. In fact, he probably could have opened packages of white socks all day long and been satisfied.

A few Christmases ago, Dad received a pair of blank VHS tapes -- if you've ever wondered what the letters "VCR" used to stand for, it had something to do with these "tapes" and the flashing numerals "12:00" -- which excited Dad because he could never find a blank tape when he needed one. A little while later, while Dad was in the bathroom, someone (it seems like something that either Ben or Allison would have suggested) decided that we should re-wrap Dad's blank tapes and give them to him to open again, just to see whether he would notice. We four kids sprang into action, with the grace of a ballet and the precision of the Blue Angels. I even think we had to make a new tag. All this accomplished, and Dad was only going #1.

So Dad opened the tapes, for the second time, and paused...and then said, "Great, more tapes!" And by that point none of us could hold in our laughter any longer. The thing is, I still don't know whether Dad ended up disappointed that he didn't actually get four tapes in all.

I'm pretty sure it was either Ben or Allison who made the suggestion, because they each have a history of gift hijinks. A few years ago, Allison opened her last present under the tree, and it was a pair of red slacks from Gap. Mom looked at Allison for a few seconds, and then asked, "Who gave you those?" It turns out Allison had bought them for herself and wrapped them for fun. I think she even snuck the package under the tree just a few minutes before she opened it.

Also, one Christmas when she was still really young, Allison signed her gifts as being from "Allison Claus." To this day I only borrow that phrasing when it seems entirely appropriate, lest I diminish its brilliance.

Ben, not to be outdone, once gave Dad a manually-altered card that read, "It's A Boy! Birthday!"

Perhaps, then, my gift to Allison last year wasn't so out of character for our family after all:

Day 5: I...Love...Crêpes

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There's nothing like gathering a family around the warming glow of a fireplace...but in a pinch, a television will do. Back before it was shown in a 24-hour loop, my family watched A Christmas Story every year, usually just a few days before Christmas. We also had VHS recordings of "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Frosty The Snowman," but those were more like OnDemand -- we kids could watch them whenever we wanted. All wholesome entertainment that the entire family could enjoy together, although as the years went by, we moved on to other things.

Several years ago, I arrived at the house in the early evening on Christmas Eve. Teddy, home from college, immediately asked me whether I had seen the South Park movie. I hadn't, and Teddy said we should go rent it. That night. So he and I watched the South Park movie on Christmas Eve. And then twice on Christmas Day. We even tried to get Mom to watch it one of those times, but she walked out about 10 minutes in, during "Uncle Fucker." Not quite the family film.

A couple years later, Teddy got Mom and Dad a DVD player with surround speakers. We got them a few DVDs as well, and on Christmas night, after Teddy set up the system, we all watched Spiderman. Maybe there's deeper symbolism here because Dad used to read Spiderman comics to us boys from the Marvel Masterworks reprint books, but let's just say that it was a good movie and we all watched it together.

Watching A Christmas Story was the closest thing we had to a family movie tradition, until a few years ago, in the aftermath of Anchorman. Teddy and Dad declared this the greatest movie ever; I first watched it when I was out at the house recovering from thoracic surgery. As in, chest and lungs, i.e., the exact part of your body that you wouldn't want to be in excruciating pain while watching Anchorman for the very first time. During the Sex Panther scene I had to dig my nails into my thigh, because that was less painful than my otherwise-uncontrollable laughing.

Anchorman begot Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby. The year it was released, Teddy announced that he was getting Talladega Nights from Netflix and we were watching it on Christmas night. And it had its moments. Last year, Teddy went with Semi Pro, which had fewer moments. And this year, we'll be watching Step Brothers. I could not have lower expectations for this movie. And yet, it's a holiday tradition, and I do look forward to it with excitement.

I wouldn't be surprised if Mom, Allison, and Tiffany have fantasies of hunting down Will Ferrell with a Red Ryder BB gun.

Day 4: Music Makes The People Come Together

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My parents' house -- which sits on a lovely corner property and is on the market -- has a few storage spaces that are more heavily camouflaged than Waldo in a candy cane factory. And once within, these storage spaces are such effective hiding places for presents that, on more than one occasion, Mom has given me a present that she originally hid so well, she couldn't find it at the time she intended to give it to me. Also, though, there's just a lot of stuff in there. My first grade class wrote a weekly newsletter using carbon paper, and I'll bet somewhere up there is a stack of every "Lovi Local" in which I was ever published. Four kids times a lot of years equals a whole lot of precious memories.

Somewhere, among those precious memories, is the program for a holiday recital that we four kids put together for Mom and Dad. Last weekend, before I told her I was writing these stories, I asked Mom if she knew where to find the program, because I really don't remember much about this concert. It was obviously centered around the piano, and I remember we put up a few decorations, but what else? Would I have tried to play a Christmas song on the oboe? Or the recorder? How old was I at the time anyway? Had I started taking blues piano lessons yet, so that I would have done an improvisational version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town"?

What does seem to be well-known about this family concert is that Ben dressed up as Santa Claus, and Allison was terrified of him. No one really knows why Allison was so afraid of Santa, but it was pretty serious. When Allison was a few years old, and she realized that Santa was going to come into our house in the middle of the night to deliver the presents, she freaked out. She absolutely would not have it. Mom and Dad had to put a note on the outside door telling Santa to leave the presents in the garage.

++++

Every year during Thanksgiving weekend, I would inaugurate the Christmas season by putting on side B of Bing Crosby's White Christmas album and dancing to it. It's worth noting that my entire knowledge of dancing, at this young age, came from the "Zoot Cat" episode of Tom & Jerry, so I really hope there is no video of this. Once I became, you know, "grown up," I decided this tradition was no longer befitting of someone of my maturity. Once I became actually grown up, I decided I wanted to hear the album again, so I picked up the CD and brought it out to the house for Christmas.

I still can sing along with every word on side B of that album. I remember every musical cue, every harmony, even how long the pauses last between songs. I feel calm and happy when I listen to it. It says "Christmas" to me in a way that not even a clever closing sentence could.

Day 3: No F---ing S---, Lady

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When I was a kid, it was easy to delight me with presents. When I badly wanted something that I couldn't buy for myself, unwrapping a package and seeing the object of my desire within was as good as it gets. As I got older, in my teenage years, what I wanted for Christmas wasn't something you could wrap and put under a tree (or at least, from the shape of the package, it wouldn't have been much of a surprise). And as I continued to grow up, once I had the money to buy things for myself, it became harder to wow me with a present. Because I was more aware of the world, it also became more difficult to get me a present that I wasn't expecting. (Books don't count.)

In 1988, Dad first got me a calendar for Christmas. (This paragraph is still background.) It was a golf calendar -- I didn't have a calendar up in my room before then, so it was functional. The following year, Dad said, "Screw it, you're getting old enough, let's put some titties on that wall." Okay, I'm sure he didn't say that, but for the next several years, I found a swimsuit calendar under the Christmas tree. These were solid gifts, although back then I didn't have a lot of girls visiting my bedroom.

(Because I never tire of telling this story: I got a particular problem on the AP U.S. History exam correct because of Cindy Crawford. She once said that she was the second most famous thing to come out of DeKalb -- after barbed wire -- and this allowed me to rule out a possible answer on a multiple choice question, only because it involved DeKalb and would have been even more famous than barbed wire if correct. And I never would have carefully read every word of a Cindy Crawford interview if I hadn't gained a respectful admiration for her, due to her presence on my wall for all of 1993. Thanks, Dad!)

My sophomore year of college, I received a homemade gift to put on my wall. Even the wrapping paper was homemade, from several sheets of computer paper printed with images of Lego sets. Inside the box was a calendar, printed on the computer and then laminated. It had the usual layout to hang from a punched hole at the top, with the calendar for the month on the bottom page, but for the top page, each month's image was of a famous Lego set or a Lego theme.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this well enough. I had a Lego calendar!

Want pictures?


I had a calendar where October was Camouflaged Outpost!

Teddy and Allison helped my parents put these together (the initials are on the back are theirs). Ben got one, too -- his theme was movies, usually with a defining quote. Die Hard was on there with the Jon McClane quote, "NO FUCKING SHIT, LADY!" Intriguing selection -- "Yippie ki-yay" would have been the standard choice, but I think this has more punch. I'm sure Alien made an appearance, although there are so many quotes to choose from that I'm not sure which it would have been. "Game over, man!" "They mostly come out at night. Mostly." "Get away from her, you bitch!" Really, there's not a wrong choice in the bunch.

So...yeah. A Lego calendar!!! But to my chagrin, the year had to come to an end sooner or later. On to a more boring 1998, then, right?

Day 2: Come On Down

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For many years now, Santa Claus has left a present for each of us kids in our bedroom. Strangely, we wouldn't discover this present until the middle of the day, after all the other presents had been opened. This has even continued into recent years when we don't live at home -- apparently when Santa sees me when I'm sleeping, he thinks it's in the blue room. (Should that be capitalized?)

I thought it would be a nice treat to have Santa give my parents this same type of plus-one present. But seeing as how I couldn't get an appointment with the big man -- apparently "tall for an elf" is not a compliment -- I had to take matters into my own hands. And so it came to pass that last year, on Christmas afternoon, after all the other presents had been opened...Allison, Teddy, Tiffany, and I invited my parents to come on down:

"You're the next contestants on The Price Is Right!"

Our host was "Allison Bob Barker," Teddy was our prize model, Tiffany was our overenthusiastic third contestant -- she bid five hundred dollars on a six-pack of Dr. Brown's -- and I was the man behind the curtain, er, couch. Mom won the first pricing game, which earned her the chance to play the minigolf game Hole In One (Or Two)...or however many tries it actually ended up taking her; I blame the groundskeeper for leaving the carpet so long. Her winnings included some peppermint dipping spoons from Crate & Barrel; being a good son, I would later consume half of them.

[As I wrote this, it became obvious to me that the game we should have given Mom is Cliffhanger, with Teddy as the mountain climber.]

The item up for bid in the second pricing game was a large box of Mike & Ike's. Tiffany bid eight hundred ninety dollars. Dad, not surpringly, was closer without going over. And at this point we brought out...the Plinko board. Allison had constructed a ping pong ball Plinko board out of foam board and push pins, and mounted it on Ben's old tripod easel. There were only two landing zones at the bottom of the board, labeled 1 and 2 for the two different prizes available. Dad was given one ping pong ball to start, and he won a second by correctly guessing the price of one of those 99-cent cans of Arizona iced tea. You know, those cans that have 99¢ printed right on the side? Dad begrudgingly guessed 99 cents. So the intent was for Dad to use his two ping pong balls to win the two prizes. Out of solidarity with Mom, I'm sure it was, he needed more than two tries to do this. But eventually he claimed the two prizes, cashews and a bag of coal.

Day 1: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Legos

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Intro: The 12 Days Of Christmas Memories
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Closing
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One year in the mid-80's, I had my eye on Robot Command Center. While it's not like this was the coolest Lego set ever -- that was the earlier Galaxy Commander (drool...) -- it was still a big deal to me. I used to read Lego catalogs before going to sleep at night. Every night. And as I was just a kid, the only way I was getting my hands on this set was through the grace and will of Santa Claus. It was only that year, though, that I had learned the secret of Santa Claus (I think Just For Men names it "Jolly White"...and yes, this will be a recurring joke, where I mention the secret of Santa Claus and then make up something else in parentheses). As I was still flush with this knowledge, it was kind of obvious why our family drove to Toys 'R Us on an early December evening. And as I was also a know-it-all...

When we arrived at Toys-R, I probably did my usual thing -- walk down the long games aisle...look at a few things, especially the electronic chess sets behind the glass...and then book it across the back of the store to the last aisle on the far side of the store: the Lego aisle. I don't know how to describe the Lego aisle other than...well...it was kind of like the scene in Rush Hour 2 where they raise the curtain and Chris Tucker gets to choose from all the...well, let's just say that if Mom ever lost me in that store, she knew where to find me. So I spent my usual several minutes looking at the box for Robot Command Center, opening the front flap that revealed the pieces within and more alternate creations on the inside cover, and checking out a few other sets as well. Eventually my parents wandered over with my brothers and dragged me to other parts of the store. Later, as we're about ready to head toward the exit, I get smart-alecky and decide to prove that I know what's under Mom's coat at the bottom of the shopping cart. I reach in and move the coat, and sure enough, out peeks Robot Command Center. My parents, obviously annoyed at me, scold me and then take it back to the Lego aisle and leave it there. We go through the checkout without it, and we leave the store.

Holy crap, they're serious. Did I really just screw up Robot Command Center? But then, of course, before we can drive away, one of my parents "forgot something" in the store and goes back for it. And they deny, deny, deny, but something goes in the trunk of the car. And wouldn't you know it, on Christmas morning there's a present tucked toward the back of the pile that is of a suspiciously right size. The morning rolls along, the pile shrinks a bit, and I decide to make the move for my mystery box. I give it a little shake, and I hear that sound.

Know what Mom says? "Oh...it's not time for that one yet."

The 12 Days Of Christmas Memories

Each day between now and Christmas, I'll offer up some of my favorite memories from Christmases past with my parents, my brothers Ben and Teddy, my sister Allison, and recently Teddy's wife Tiffany. My siblings will help me out a bit, my hazy recollection will hinder me a bit, and somehow I'll embroider it all together. I'll strive to be somewhat poignant, somewhat funny, and somewhat concise, which should ensure that I achieve none of those three.

I think I'm writing this for my parents but not to my parents; I need to pretend my reader doesn't already know these stories, because otherwise it would feel like my parents are staring at me the whole time. Also, I'm totally going to link to this from Facebook.

These stories are in no particular order, except that on the first days I'll probably write the ones that seem the easiest to write. Feel free to heckle me as I go.

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Day 1: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Legos
Day 2: Come On Down
Day 3: No F---ing S---, Lady
Day 4: Music Makes The People Come Together
Day 5: I...Love...Crêpes
Day 6: 'Tis Better To Give
Day 7: You Will Eat Way Too Much Food...In Bed
Day 8: Whose Turn Is It?
Day 9: Early To Bed And Early To Rise
Day 10: While You Were Sleeping
Day 11: The Snapparellas
Day 12: The Most Ridiculous Thing I've Ever Done
In Closing: Fah Who For-aze, Dah Who Dor-aze
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