Day 11: The Snapparellas

--------
Intro: The 12 Days Of Christmas Memories
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Closing
--------

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).