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December
2001|
 Christmas???
What the %$@! ???
Am
I to infer from the non-optional fun-style work-related party
events slowly choking my e-mail in-box on the job that we have
in fact rung in the ever delightful and free-spending holiday
season once again? Tell me it isn't so....
Well,
this being so, I suppose I should make haste to do two things:
mention that, number 1, Mr. Tick has addressed
the nation's top holiday related concern, as ranked by Dateline,
in a recent letter that you should hustle off right now to read.
Secondly,
I shall now embark upon listing....The Top 5 All Time Holiday
Horrors according to Me!!!
Horror
# 5: The Chicken Bone Christmas
Nora
the min pin grabs a deadly splintering chicken bone from some
Christmas Eve snack tray dregs and proceeds to wedge herself beneath
the couch in order to be impossible to grab as she lodges the
deadly poultry shards in her tiny throat in pursuit of a cheap
second hand snack!! My mother panics and runs around the house
screaming that NORA WILL DIE!!! and OH MY GOD!!!! You can just
feel the Christmas spirit drain from the room. Somehow --my memory
of this is hazy now-- the chicken bone is wrestled from the snapping
and voracious jaws of the tiny fat beast.
Horror
# 4: The Butter Christmas
See
above, substitute a whole stick of butter. Dad jokes that if she
had actually eaten the stick of butter we simply could have placed
her in the oven and had a Cornish Game Pin.
Horror
# 3: Barbra Streisand's version of "Jingle Bells"
Have
you heard it? Have you??!! Picture Babs singing the following
over and over as it gradually speeds up into jaunty Yuletide incomprehension:
JinglebellsJinglebellsjinglebellsjing!jing!jing!
This
song utterly enrages me.
Horror
# 2: The Hanukkah Bush
The
year? 1994. The place? The holy Mecca of California political
correctness, my alma mater UC Santa Cruz, more specifically, the
administrative office of the college where I worked. The offending
item? A culturally sensitive holiday decor compromise, the Hanukkah
bush, placed innocently upon the counter by a coworker to impart
a peaceful message of holiday greetings to high strung and sensitive
students of all creeds.
The
innocent bush catches the strident, politically awakened eye of
M***** G********, who busts through the twisting line of grade-checking,
I-payed-my-fees-stamp-getting students, Declaring On High That
She Has Been Offended On Behalf of the Jewish Faith by the evil,
insensitive bush. Shouting match ensues between M***** and the
office worker, also Jewish, who innocently placed the bush upon
the counter. Needless to say the controversial, yet well-meaning
plant was immediately removed to prevent further Incidents of
Personal Offense from interfering with the University's prime
directive of preaching diversity and tolerance. God in His heaven
smiled.
And
now.... for horror # 1.....
Horror
# 1: The Christmas in which I decided never again to go home for
Christmas
Had
to catch shuttle at 4 in the morning to make it home on Christmas
eve. Awaken to freak snowstorm. Sociopathic-looking cab driver
who picks me up alone in the dead of night asks suspicious questions
about my job and interests as he decides to take an "alternate"
route to the airport, nearly scaring the love of Christ right
into me. Got lucky, must not have been an actual scheduled kill
night for him.
Barely
make shuttlebus at pickup point. Bus stalls and tips precariously
trying to spin its way out of a snowy ditch, terrifying freezing
passengers.
Approaching
airport, bus tips and begins to slide backward into ditch. Police
officer dressed like cop in "Fargo" complete with snow
hat gestures hysterically to the bus driver who clearly has no
idea how to prevent bus from falling into ditch. Johnny Cash look-alike,
clinging to the rail above to avoid eating the window, turns to
me and says "some Christmas we're havin'."
Bus
manages to right itself. Bus driver announces we have all missed
any flights leaving before 11 (which is all of the flights-- why
else would we all have been up at 4?) Cars are spun out and stalled
all over the road. Bus labors frighteningly trying to make it
up hill to airport.
Arrive
at airport. Wait many hours for another flight, then almost miss
barely-timed connecting flight to destination. I arrive at the
gate --the doors are closed-- and the lady says "This is
the last Christmas eve flight to Arkansas. You missed the boarding
and will have to get a hotel." I burst into miserable tears
in front of massive holiday crowd. Lady opens doors and gets me
on the flight.
Am
seated next to creepy man with two-toned hair and steel-toed boots
who tells me all about hot Arkansan night spot "The Bobby
Soxer." Cousin later confirms this to be pickup joint for
middle aged men.
Arrive
at airport. Luggage is lost and remains missing for three days
until I track it down in an unrelated airport storage area after
spending three days on the phone with clueless airport employees
who have no answer to my repeated question "don't you look
at the tags on lost luggage?"
 Todays
subject: UNKNOWN
Something
has to change here at the offices of Tiny Dog. More often than
not, the subject of my rant is unknown even to myself or otherwise
about nothing, and not the knee-slapping, delightfully ironic
"Seinfeldian" brand of nothing, either. Quite frankly
I think my mind is rather like a deciduous tree, particularly
since moving to Washington state, slime-mold capital of the United
States. During the winter months, my interest in anything aside
from taking naps atrophies and dies until spring (which in Seattle
falls approximately at the beginning of August).
So
where does this leave Tiny Dog? As we have witnessed, it leaves
it a stagnating, infrequently updated treatise on nothingness
with meaningless tomato clip art. Enjoy.
Did
I mention that Mr. Tick is currently working on a letter about
a wayward cat, trapped in a cult led by ferrets? Stay tuned.
Allegedly
the rant at right has led some people to believe the blasphemous
untruth, that I don't like Christmas. This my people is
a LIE!! I must therefore follow up with the FIVE MOST EXCELLENT
CHRISTMAS EVENTS.
Event
#5: The Angel Perfume
Excessively
Catholic neighbor child Carrie Weaver shows me a bottle of perfume
at Christmastime late 1970-something, proclaiming that if I put
some on and didn't wash it off, angels would visit me in the night
(and thus likely appraise me of the superior ways of the Catholic
faith). I was of course instructed to take some sort of shower
or bath that evening by a parental unit (who was possibly in that
casual decision rinsing
away my path to eternal salvation). I, cleansed of my one chance
to visit with soul-salvaging heavenly apparitions, cried, and
thussly lied to Carrie Weaver the following day that I had in
fact seen the angels. In what way is this a good memory you ask?
In that it was probably the last time that I, in that single-mindedly
faithful and hallucinogenic way of children, utterly believed
that there was a god.
Event
#4 When Leonard blew up the Legos
May I remark
that I had completely written this two paragraph anecdote, and
written in beautifully, when my computer inexplicably locked up,
sucking the entirety of the narrative swiftly and irretrievably
down the crapper and requiring, as Macs always do, a full reboot
of the machine. My shock at the wasted efforts and snuffed-out
witticisms prevents me from wasting any more time near a computer
for the rest of the night. That said I may continue this list
at a later time.
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