I Said Daily, I Meant Daily

Friday, December 01, 2006

Busy day and I really don’t have a story ready. So I’ll just freestyle a couple of holiday-themed anecdotes.

Christmas 2001 Robin came to visit me from Boston. She took the bus, 8-hours, and was spent by the time she got in. She gets to DC only to discover that I didn’t buy a tree. We went to Cleveland Park to see if we could find someone selling a tree. There was some organic mart with these little four-footers out front so we purchased one. We couldn’t take it on the metro so I just said I’d carry it home – it was only two one metro stop, after all, probably a little over a mile walk, and the tree was light. Well, after walking three blocks, uphill, I realized I made a very big mistake. Not wanting to look like a wuss, however, I continued to carry it all the way home. The anguish on my face was apparent because every five minutes Robin would ask, “Are you sure you don’t want me to carry it?”

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One year Santa came to my grandma’s house. I knew “Santa was in our hearts” at this point so I asked my mom who was playing Santa.

“What do you mean? That’s Santa.”

No-one would tell me. I don’t think it was a family member, I remember as a kid thinking it was my Grandfather but then my Grandfather showed up. Looking at pictures of the Santa, now, I still have no idea who he was. I don’t think his red nose was from the cold, though – Santa looks drunk in those pictures.

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Speaking of grandma’s house, we’d always have a big Christmas Eve thing there where all seven brothers and sisters (plus the grandparents) would give gifts to all of the nieces and nephews. So, the night before Christmas you were guaranteed at least seven presents and they were always the things on your list that “Santa didn’t get a chance to make,” so they weren’t shitty gifts at all.

The adults would torture us. They’d set some time for us to open the presents and it was always hours away. When the time came they’d start taking pictures of us and setting up cameras and finding all these excuses to hold us up even more.

Let’s put this into perspective. The cousins consisted of me, my sister, Luis, Andy, Amanda, Samantha, Keisha, Tatum, Christina, lil-Mike, and, on occasion, big Mike from Arizona. Eleven kids. Each kid gets a minimum of seven presents. There were at least 77 presents under that tree and the adults just kept fucking with us. 77 wrapped-up presents waiting to be torn open. And my mom was using her spit-finger to wipe peanut butter off of my face so I’d look good for pictures.

Torture.

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