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GenePool
Humor
That Special
Time of Year
I'm beginning to think my wife just doesn't like Christmas shopping.
Last year, at around this time, Deb was on crutches. She'd stepped into a hole in the sidewalk while carrying a large coffee, which is an important detail when one considers that she might have never had to worry about crutches had she managed to drop the coffee and fall to the ground when her ankle insisted on going in a different direction the rest of her had been planning to go. Unfortunately, she is very fond of coffee, (as are we all,) so while she didn't spill a drop, she did severely strain her Achilles.
This was unfortunate for two reasons. One, it meant I had to do the bulk of the shopping, which meant journeying into shopping malls, which meant giving up at least a portion of my sanity and a good deal of my free time, neither of which I'm getting back any time soon. Two, her mother spent a month with us to help around the house.
I don't want to say that this was an entirely bad thing, per se, because we really did need the help. But the primary reason the help was needed was that my wife is also addicted to decorations, and it was rather obvious that any assistance I offered in that regard was going to be coming with a great deal of sarcasm, as I have been known to employ sarcasm generously in these situations. And this would not do. It's also a bit difficult to accustom oneself to having a guest for an entire month, no matter who it is. For example, it's just about impossible to walk around half-naked with a guest in the house.
Worse, when I couldn't finish all the shopping myself ("you bought what for who???") I had to make a couple of last minute trips to the mall with both wife and mother-in-law, meaning I was intractably out-voted on all matters. And, I had to carry everything because we couldn't hire a sherpa.
This year Deb is no longer on crutches and her mother is safely ensconced in her West Coast home, so things were looking up all around, up until Deb got a new job.
The problem is, Deb's been working at a biotech company for about four years now, and one can't just drop whatever one is doing at the time and run off to another company. For one thing, you might be holding something toxic, so dropping it would invariably be rather bad for you and everyone else in the immediate vicinity. More importantly, if one is leaving for good one must first get everything entirely caught up, including one's notebook. Science labs live and die by notebooks, because it's the only record of what experimental procedures were used, which is sort of important if one wishes to re-create a successful experiment at a later date. This was, incidentally, Victor Von Frankenstein's big mistake, which is why even today we still have not caught up with his ground-breaking reanimation technology. (Tragic, as a reanimated corpse would be a perfect shopping sherpa.)
So she has to get that caught up before she leaves. At the same time, she's starting work at the new company, so she's effectively working two jobs for the next couple of weeks, which brings us up to Christmas, which means hello mall for me.
There is the outside possibility she will find some free time somewhere, but I'm afraid that if she does the time will have to be taken up not by bargain-hunting, but by penguin-making.
Our dining room has been turned into a penguin factory. This is my daughter's fault. Her Spanish class is going to Costa Rica in the spring and she's trying to raise money for it. Now, a couple of years ago Deb made a bunch of penguins for her office party. They're very easy to make. All you need is wooden doll's heads, some small clay pots, a glue gun with glue sticks, black paint, white paint, yellow paint, wood varnish, little flat wooden hearts, little cloth flowers, two different types of ribbon, a couple of large sheets of black construction paper, a lot of paint brushes. Really, they practically assemble themselves.
Deb suggested that as a way to raise money Becky could sell the penguins at school. With all the coats of paint, the varnishing, the finishing, the gluing, drawing, cutting, treating, and drinking of large amounts of wine, it took them about two weeks to make thirty-six penguins. And if Becky sells them out they plan on making another fifty. I could help but honestly? I'd rather shop. And yes, I don't think I'll ever type that sentence again and mean it.
Shopping would be easier, I think, if I knew what the hell to get everybody. My children have officially become cyphers in this regard. There are a lot of great things about having two kids who are old enough to come home alone, who can feed themselves, and who can independently access rated R films when I'm not in the building. It saves me a lot of time. The downside is, I can no longer just walk into Toys R Us with an empty shopping cart and emerge an hour later with a full cart and both children taken care of. One of my children (Becky, age 12) doesn't play with toys any more, and the other (Tim, age 11) only asks for really annoying toys I frankly don't want to buy. I'm talking mainly about Transformers here. Every afternoon Tim watches a cartoon by the same name and is treated to what amounts to a gigantic half hour commercial. He spent most of the past summer begging me to buy him something called "Unicron" and when I finally did (and the goddamn thing cost $50) he wanted me to buy a different version of "Unicron" that was exactly the same in every respect except it was a different color. Seems the cartoon Unicron got some new armor, which gave the toy company an excuse to sell it twice.
So I don't like Transformers and I'd rather not buy them. I'm also averse to anything relating to something called "Yu-Gi-Oh," and all things "Dragonball" and oh thank god we're done with "Pokemon". He'd like something called a Gameboy Advance, but when I found out the only reason he wanted it was because it was smaller (it plays the exact same games as the one he already has) it struck me that that was a damn stupid thing to spend eighty dollars on.
But I don't know what else to get him. And Becky? No idea. She wants clothing. Unfortunately, we're also well past the stage when I can just pick out stuff for her to wear-- you and I both know that's a road leading directly to disaster-- so what do I do with that?
There is an outside possibility that it won't matter, as I may never get a chance to buy anything anyway. Last weekend a major snowstorm hit the area and ruined shopping chances for everybody with an ounce of sense. And the latest weather reports show another storm headed our way for this weekend too, which may mean I'll be trying to get it all done on the final weekend before Christmas. There is only one thing worse than trying to shop in a mall on the final weekend before Christmas, and that is trying to shop in a mall the final weekend before Christmas when nobody's gotten any shopping done yet. Just finding parking will be harder than catching the last chopper out of Saigon.
Faced with that prospect, I might just decide
to postpone the whole holiday until some time in January. I've
also heard some good things about Judaism. I might look into that.
© 2003, Gene Doucette
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