 wdevoe, Tue, March 3rd, 2009 The following appeared in the Dec. 23 editions of The Spotlight. Why on earth it's taken me so long to post it on the Web escapes me at the moment. In any case, I hope you enjoy: Shalom and welcome to a special Christmas edition of Pop Culture, America’s No. 1 resource for holiday-related family insanity. This year, the DeVoe-family Christmas will be a condensed one, as we are trying to purchase our first home (a Pop Culture for another day…or month, as it were) and, frankly, time and money are a little tight. Explaining this to my five-year-old son, Kevin, who salivates at the mere mention of Santa Claus, Christmas or presents, has been more difficult for my wife than it has been for me. “Bill, we’ve got to let Kevin know somehow that Christmas won’t be as grandiose this year as it’s been in the past,” my wife said to me about a month ago. “Done and done,” I said and walked into my son’s room, where he was playing with the mountain of toys he received last Christmas. “Kevin.” “Yes, Daddy.” “Pick a number between one and 10.” “Why? Do you have a surprise for me?” “You bet. Now go ahead and pick” “I choose…six.” “Christmas is cancelled.” Kevin began to cry and ran directly into his mother’s arms. His mother held him tight and stared at me with a look of scorn anger so severe that it still haunts my dreams. Sure, Christmas will be light this year, but we’ll get through it, just like my parents, my brother and I got through it years ago. My mom goes crazy for Christmas — she has a tattoo of Sam the Snowman from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on her neck — and she spoils us every Christmas to this day, but some years my parents just didn’t have a lot to give. One year my brother and I got a pound of red pistachios. We fought over how we were going to split them and finally settled on the following: My brother got the nuts and I got the shells. Oh well, they turned your hands red and to a six-year-old kid that was sort of cool. The best present I received during those lean times was a wooden tennis racket with a picture of Evonne Goolagong on it. If you’re not a tennis fan, or if you’re like the 99.99 percent of human beings who do not have the surname Goolagong, you may not know who she is. I sure as hell didn’t. Evonne Goolagong was a female tennis player whose career spanned the 1970s and 80s. In 1971, she won the female singles titles at the French Open and Wimbledon, prompting Björn Hellberg (yes, that Björn Hellberg) to declare her the No. 1 female tennis player of that year. Of course, all of this meant nothing at all to my 16-year-old self as I unwrapped her tennis racket on Christmas morning. “Do you like it?” My mother asked excitedly. Now, I love my mother. Always have, always will. But I’m sure that my sarcastic, despicable teenage self said something back to her to the effect of: “Yes, mom, I love it. I look forward to playing my friends with the most obscurely endorsed, antique piece of sports equipment sometime around eight months from now, when the snow melts.” I’m sure she’s a wonderful person and I have no doubt that she was an excellent tennis player, but I swear to you that if I ever meet the person whose idea it was to put Evonne Goolagong’s picture on a wooden tennis racket and sell it to people in a day and age when it was possible to bend aluminum and other metals, I will kick him right in the groin. Back to the future: This year the wind has been taken out of Christmas’ sails, so to speak, as my wife and I try to coordinate the schedules of a number of agents, lawyers, inspectors and brokers as we try to buy a home. It probably isn’t a bad thing, for our neighbors or us. You see, we’re regularly the noisiest, most hectic family on the planet, but especially so on Christmas morning. Let’s do this scientifically. We’ll take a look at our basis for comparison first: any school or work day throughout the year. The most seasoned ringmaster in the annals of circusry couldn’t keep track of what’s going on in my house on any given morning. The first act begins at about 5, when my one-year-old son, Nathan wakes up for no apparent reason other than to yell at the top of his lungs and wake Kevin up. My wife sleeps through this. She could sleep through World War III. Kevin makes a beeline to let the dog out her crate while I let Nathan out of his. (The crib, I mean. Please, no calls to Child Protective Services.) The dog immediately sets to jumping all over Kevin and he starts laughing hysterically. I try to set Nathan down so I can make coffee, but he starts screaming his face off because he wants to be held. My wife is still asleep. At 5:30 a.m., the first of what seems to be 19 alarm clocks starts going off in the bedroom. “Daaaad!” Kevin screams. “Whatsamatter?” I yell back, thinking the dog has hurt him. “The alarm is going off in your room,” Kevin says quietly. My wife is still asleep. I put Nathan in his highchair and it seems to calm him down somewhat to at least be at the same elevation as his brother. Once again:“Daaaad!” “Whatsamatter?” “The dog wants to eat my face.” “Kevin the dog doesn’t want to eat your face. He’s just licking you — he’s being friendly.” “No, he’s not,” says Kevin. “He’s licking my face because my nose tastes good.” Breakfast is a joke. My youngest son wants to eat dog food, the dog wants to eat anything that will fit in his mouth and my oldest son doesn’t want to eat anything. At six o’clock in the morning, my wife comes out of our bedroom to find my two sons and me dancing like madmen to “She’s a Lady.” It’s all very cute until my five-year-old decides to turn his little behind to my wife and start shaking it. “Sheee’s a laaaady!” he sings, sounding more like Jerry Lewis than Tom Jones. “Whoooaaaa-oh-oh she’s a laaady!” It gets worse when he starts spanking his own butt and galloping around the dining room like he’s riding some invisible horse. “Laaady!” “Oh my god!” she screams, her first words of the morning. “I’m surrounded by you nasty men!” And the day begins… Now, take that morning routine and add to it a fiver-year-old’s anticipation of presents under the tree, about four hours less sleep and the dog’s attempt to assert its dominance over a dried and dying Douglas Fir, and you can see why I won’t mind if this Christmas is a little less…Christmas-y. But, dear reader, I hope your holidays are good ones. In the words of Lucy Van Pelt, “You know, deck them halls and all that stuff.” As always, feel free to drop me a line. CATEGORY: General Society
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