The True Meaning of Christmas.....Family and Flamable Snakes

I've just returned home after a lovely visit to my Aunt Julie and Uncle Paul's house. I should backtrack a little bit and say that I spent yesterday (Christmas Eve) at my parents' place because, well, after an evening of belly-busting gluttony and gift-exchange, the last thing I actually wanted to do was try to button my jeans back up to face the public and head home. So, I stayed there on my mother's very comfortable sofa. I am always happy to stay overnight at my mother's house becuase I can turn into an utter TV junkie and unabashedly watch hours upon hours of cable stations I don't have, or order up a marathon of "Sex and The City" episodes with On Demand.

Of course, the trade off is that I had to get up bright and early to see Al open her gifts from Santa. But this is a labor of love. Al is such a great kid, and seeing her squeal with delight as she opened her presents was a gift in and of itself. She would periodically exclaim, "Oh My Goodness", or "Oh, how cute!" when opening up a gift. The best moment, by far, was when she realized that the huge gift bag in the center of the living room contained the purple princess bike she had been asking for for the past three months. She was so overcome and so impatient to get at the thing, that instead of letting my sister pull it out of the bag for her, she actually climbed in the bag with it. Now how could a few more hours' of sleep compete with that???

My family celebrates the bulk of the Christmas bonanza on Christmas Eve. We started doing this back when we were older teenagers and could not be bothered with waking up at 4 AM to open gifts. We have been doing it this way ever since. Now that there are little kids in the picture again, it makes sense for the adults to exchange gifts the night before. Christmas morning with the kiddies is just too confusing!

My family members were extremely generous, as always. My parents gave me a plethora of gift certificates to local stores and markets, and my sister and brother-in-law spoiled me with a very decadant gift certificate to my beloved Aveda store. On top of the certificate, they begifted me with my hands-down favorite "purifying gel cleanser." My shower this morning was luxurious!

This morning, there was a beautiful necklace for me under the tree! How exciting. Al had been saying all along that Santa was going to bring Auntie a boo-ful necklace, and sure enough, right there under the tree, there was the most boo-ful necklace this Auntie had ever seen!

I headed home shortly after breakfast (the total calories of which Bill Gates himself could not possibly compute). My intention was to do some cleaning. I have not been home much in the past week, and everytime I walk through the door, I seem to have a new bag to dump on the table. There was a Mount Fuji of Target items forming in my beautiful new table. As Carol Brady would say, it was really "gnawing at my craw." I really wanted to clear it up.

At any rate, I managed to get the mountain significantly pared down. It now looks like a gently rolling hill of Target crap residing on my table. Better than Fuji. I wanted to continue on my cleaning crusade, but then I spotted my exercise equipment in the corner, and was guilted into working out. Once again, I spent an hour of my life with those southern belle bitches in "The Firm", but it was worth it. Especially when I was eating chocolates at my sister's place later on. And especially when I was washing down those chocolates with a gallon of peppermint stick ice cream at my Aunt's place. How could I say no to peppermint stick??

After working out, I returned to my mother's house for an early dinner. Do you see the food theme developing here? Keep reading if you need more to work with. I'm sure the subject of holiday waist-expansion will rear its ugly head at least once more in this blog!

Following dinner, Lauren, John and I broke open the VH1 I-Love-The-80s game I gave Lauren for Christmas. It was actually pretty funny. How often do subjects like kangaroo sneakers, Bon Jovi, Mili Vanili, Full House, William the Refrigerator Perrry, Geraldine Ferraro, Gerry Falwell, The Carebears and the blockbuster Pretty in Pink all come up within the course of one hour's worth of conversation? With the exception of Bon Jovi, whom I discuss for a minimum of 34 minutes daily, it had been at least a week since I'd thought about or discussed the other topics. And I certainly had mentioned only two or three of them in the same conversation. Never all at once!

We busted up the game because Lauren et al had to head over to her in-laws place. I hung out and watched a few more hours worth of mindless television. I tuned in to the Discovery Health station, where a show on medical mysteries was airing. Crazy crap. A woman who took a common antibiotic and subsequently lost all her skin (no joke!), a guy who sprouted a HORN from his arm, a woman with lobster claw like hands, and a pregnant man. I have to congratulate the programming manager over there for his impeccable taste in Christmas day scheduling.

Anyway, over at my Aunt's house, I had a really great time. Everybody was pretty mellow at first. Once again, the food-induced coma usually starts to manifest itself around that early evening time of Christmas day. We enjoyed bringing gifts to my gorgeous 3 year-old cousin Brier. The little girl thinks she's a princess. As far as I can tell, she is absolutely right! That child is beautiful. She's so funny and bright and she really enjoyed her gifts.

Something got us on the topic of Little House on the Prarie. I guess that topic is never really too far outside of anybody's realm of daily thought, so it shouldn't surprise me that much.

We quickly moved onto the more specific topic of naming our favorite guest characters, or perhaps I should call them minor characters as opposed to guest characters.

Reesie expressed a fondness for the Ape Child. The Ingalls family claimed they were going to take care of the child and adopt him as their own. In his debut episode, the child had his unruly wig shorn, and was given a hand-tailored blouse and pair of gouchos fresh from Caroline's needle. However, Reesie shared her disappointment at the fact that this child never appeared in another episode. Perhaps the ratings were unfavorable? Perhaps Pa was afraid of having his highly acclaimed dramatic scenes upstaged by this undoubtedly talented actor. Perhaps he got Iziah drunk at the local saloon, and then convinced him that the kid was an advancing bear, thus prompting Iziah to take aim with his shotgun. And we all know that Iziah was the pioneer equivalent of a modern-day sharp shooter. That kid was as good as dead! Reesie went on to praise the performance of Jason Bateman, who portrayed the unforgettable James, who was accepted into the loving embrace of the Ingalls family without so much as a second thought.

Pam waxed nostalic for the child who had the short leg, and for whom Pa fashioned a special shoe with a much thicker sole, so as to even the child's gait. Forgive us for not knowing the child's name. How much do we want to bet that Lauren will have a comment with the kids first, last, middle and social? Prior to Pa's futuristic achievements in the field of orthopedic walking aids, the little girl was the vicim of the hurtful jeers and mocking of the other children of Walnut Grove. Pam was right to condemn Nelly Olson's further taunting of the child when Nelly bullied the child into removing the special shoe in order to wade in Plum Creek. This, of course, served as a cruel reminder to the onlookers that this child was nothing but a gimp, and would always be nothing but a pathetic gimp, even with Pa's marvels of orthopedic engineering.

After the reminder of Nelly's cruelty, I was hoping for a more humorous interlude in the conversation, but Julie further darkened the mood by calling to memory Sylvia, the little girl who was raped by the circus clown. As if we weren't freaked out enough about clowns as it is. That was a very traumatizing episode, but I always took comfort in the fact that Albert, himself a morphine addict and therefore completely personally unstable, offered to take care of Sylvia and her bastard child. That was very moving and it just reminded us that even though James was the cuter of the adopted Ingalls boys, Albert was, in spite of his narcotic dependancy, the REAL adopted Ingalls boy. James just couldn't measure up. If given the opportunity to help poor Sylvia, James would undoubtedly have turned his back and taken the next stagecoach to Sleepy Eye where he would take up residence in one of those inns featuring women of ill-repute.

Pam then took the conversation down a different path by discussing which of the characters on Little House she would like to be. Sure, you probably think she went for the obvious. Did she want to be little Half Pint, always so cute and mature beyond her years? What about beautiful, blue-eyed blonde Mary? The heroic Charles? No, her logic went much deeper than that. Pam said that she would be Grace. Julie reminded her that Grace was killed in the blind school fire, caused by Albert's selfish indulgance of a few cigarette puffs in the basement, and that she should be Harriet, the woman saved by Grace. Pam said she would rather go down in a blaze of glory, such as was Grace's fate, rather than live on with the shroud of survivor's guilt forever hovering overhead, as was the case with Harriet.

At one point, Reesie proffered her opinon that Iziah might be gay. Pam jumped to Iziah's defense, asserting, "There wasn't a gay bone in Iziah's body." To back Pam up, I reminded them all that Iziah was often fond of advertising the fact that he combed his hair with a wagon wheel. What gay man would do that? Reesie accepted our logic and, much to my relief, dropped this ill-conveived theory.

Bobby was feeling left out of the converstaion as he was never much of a Little House fan. Understandably, he felt the need to shift the converstaion into somewhat of a more personal comfort zone. To that end, he bagan to discuss the summer that Lauren and I spent up there at the Tarpey abode in York, Maine. The Summer of Infamy, as it were!

Now that was a crazy summer!

I was 11 and Lauren was 13.

That summer, I was the object of one of the neighbor's childhood crush. I believe the kid's name was Shane Pokenis. There were about 7 sons in the Pokenis family, all of whom had first names starting with the letter S. Several weeks ago, Reesie informed me that this family won the lottery and picked up and moved out of the area. This was years ago.

Tonight, Reesie began to rehash that story, obviously thinking it old news to all involved. Bobby nearly lept from the Masterpiece Theatre Rocker upon hearing the news. He hadn't heard the lottery tales. However interesting Bobby found the story, he had to question its veracity. You see, he has a conflicting theory as to what happened to this mystery family. He claimed the mother, having had enough of their tobacco-chewing asses, escaped to Florida. The woman's peace was apparently short-lived because, according to Bobby, the husband and sons found out where she was and headed down to Florida to be with her. I reckon Reesie and Bobby will get on the case of trying to figure out the true story. I would advise them to start with the mental hospitals in Florida, for if that crew hunted me down in spite of my best efforts to ditch them, that's where I'd end up!

We were having a few laughs about all the crazy things we did that summer. One of our favorite activities was to save up the money my aunt would give us to go to the beach and buy cold drinks or ice creams in order to buy packages of snaps, ash snake tablets, matches, lighters, and other paraphanalia (spelling?) with which to start fires. (Sure, we were often thirsty on the beach because we didn't spend our beverage money of beverages, but shit, don't believe the hype, if you're thirsty enough, a nice big sip of salt water will do you fine!)

Every day, we would claim that we were taking a walk to the top of the hill to visit the neighbors. Hogwash! We were actually going up there to satiate our thirst for arson!

We wouldn't just light one of the snake tablets on fire. That would not provide us with enough of a rush. We started off by lighting two or three at a time. When that got old, we'd do an entire package. When that bored us, we would light the whole package, box and all. Eventually, we were throwing multiple boxes of snakes into the flame. Nothing was sacred. We burned jelly shoes, rubber bracelets, my Aunt and Uncle's junk mail...anything that was flammable was good enough for us.

This activity has gone down in the annals of our personal history as "Big Flame!"

Now, all summer long, we did this. Bobby was still a little guy, but he was curious as to what we were up to. Eventually, caving into his plantive cries about being constantly left behind, we swore him to secrecy and brought him along. We didn't want to think too long about it, because if we really stopped to analyze our decision to let him come along, we certainly would have reasoned against it and ditched him at home.

Lauren, Reesie, Fwiz and Julie (a special guest that weekend, and an eager participant in "Big Flame!"), all had on sneakers and socks or other substantial footwear. Bobby barely had time to put on his flimsy Transformer flip-flops. And he certainly did not have time to change out of his Super Man pajames (complete with cape.) As usual, the geniuses that we were, we began a flame right in the woods. This day was particularly dry and hot, and we naturally panicked when the flame started to get a little out of control. Again, we girls were all in protective footwear, but, for some reason, we all started spontaneously shouting for Bobby to stomp out the flame, which he did swiftly and deftly. He probably saved my Aunt and Uncle's property, to be quite honest. We lauded his heroics, but saw no reason to apologize to this small child for forcing him to step on an open forest fire with bare feet. Maybe it was the Super Man outfit that made us think he was up for the job. He didn't seem to mind, so we didn't force the issue. It was a little awkward, however, later in the day, when Auntie Mary found his melted Transformer flip-flops beside the garage door. Bobby was always an obedient kid; he stomped out open flames with bare feet when ordered to do so, and he always made sure to leave his shoes, melted flip-flops and sneakers alike, outside the garage door.

Bobby was unflappable when confronted by his mother. "They must have been out in the Sun too long" he said nonchalantly, the ash stains still visible on this blistered toes.

We thought we were pretty lucky that she didn't question us further. We thought we were pretty smart, that we'd duped my Aunt and Uncle all summer.

It turns out, years later, she confessed the truth. She and her neighbor, Gloria Shaw, who between the two of their homes, had sweeping views of the entire neighborhood, knew exactly what we were up to all summer long. When we headed up the hill, in clear view of Gloria's window, she would call my aunt, and the two of them would sit and drink coffee while talking on the phone and watching us engage in petty larson from their respective windows. Mr. Shaw would often have a bucket of water on hand in the event that he had to run up the hill and bail us out. Fortunatley, thanks to Bobby's bravery and willingness to put out a fire with his bare feet, no such emergency rescues were required of Mr. Shaw.

What does any of this have to do with Christmas, you may ask?

Everything. It has everything to do with Christmas.

If it weren't Christmas today, we would not all have convened at my aunt's place. It took the whole group of us to "add fuel" (pardon the pun) to these stories and to help us collectively relive them. It wasn't a fancy Christmas, but it was a fun one, and that's all that counts.

Thanks to Lauren, John, Reesie, Bobby, Pam, Julie, Karen, Maryanne and anybody else who brought the past alive this Christmas. Hopefully there will be a lot more future fun for us to relive again and again at Christmastimes to come!

Merry Christmas!