Ho Ho Horror
I know it’s a little late to be sharing yuletide tales and I usually avoid second-hand stories, but I love these too much not to put them in print.
The first one occurred on Christmas Eve as I was en route to my sister’s house for the holidays. She was busy preparing for Christmas and her two kids were a bit rambunctious so she went to the NORAD website where they track Santa’s travels and set the computer to play videos of the various places he’d already visited that night. A little while later, terrified Zach, 6, ran into the kitchen and cried, “They shot Santa!” My sister asked him to explain and he said that Santa was peeing on a wall and some guy came out and shot Santa. So she returned to the computer to check out what videos had played and realized that the NORAD videos are now hosted on YouTube and that after the regular videos had played, Zach had navigated his way through other videos and sure enough, there was one showing exactly what he had described. I’m pretty sure that on the list of traumatic childhood events, seeing Santa get shot and killed on Christmas Eve is actually above seeing one’s own parents get shot and killed. I know the typical American response in such a situation would be to sue NORAD and YouTube for emotional distress but my sister settled for telling him that it wasn’t real and then putting parental controls on the computers.
The next day I confirmed the story with Zach and he told me it made him cry. I asked why and he said, “Because I was worried about Santa… and if I’d be getting any presents.”
The second story occurred last year and it’s another urination story involving my nephews. Just before Christmas the family had driven from their home near Phoenix up to Flagstaff and along the way Zach really had to pee. With no services around, they had to pull over to the side of the road. The younger one, Jake, was three at the time and insisted he didn’t have to pee. Then he caught sight of the action and decided he needed to participate and squealed, “Pee on the tree!” and ran out to join the fun. On the drive home he recognized the same area and asked, “Pee on the tree?” So they indulged his white trash impulses. Once home, the novelty hadn’t worn off and he continued to ask if he could “pee on the trees” in their backyard and his little tush was just too cute for his parents to say no. Then they purchased their enormous Christmas tree. My sister walked into the living room to find Jake in his firing position as he asked innocently, “Pee on the tree?”
My sister managed to avoid a Golden Christmas and she maintains she’s thankful for it but I still think it would have been worth the clean up if he’d actually gone through with it.
With that, let me wish everybody a Happee New Year!
Even Shaq Could Make This Free Throw
Living in an apartment means I get to wash my clothes in the building’s laundry facility. And anybody who’s ever had to wash their clothes in a public location knows that sometimes you have to handle other people’s clothes and vice versa. Usually it’s not a problem for me because I tend to do my laundry in the middle of the night and there are several extra machines for any other night owls but occasionally it happens.
I always do two loads and leave an empty basket on top of each of the machines that I’m using but I estimate that 70% of the time when someone has to take my clothes out of the washer they put them somewhere else- on the table, in the rolling laundry cart, in the dryer. On a couple occasions I even had people pay to start the dryer. They may have thought they were doing me a favor but I have a lot of stuff I don’t put in the dryer so I’d just as soon cover the fifty cents myself.
I’m writing this in the hopes that somebody can provide me with a possible explanation as to why a person would remove the basket from the top of the machine, pull my clothes out and then not put my clothes in that basket. Anybody? As I said, this occurs in this manner more often than not and it’s happened over the course of many years of apartment dwelling so it’s unlikely that it’s one idiotic culprit. Does the basket on the machine have some meaning I’m not aware of, kind of like putting quarters on a pool table? Or am I simply being too tough and the connection between the empty basket and the clothes inside isn’t as blatantly obvious as I think it is? If I could attribute it to laziness I would, but since throwing the clothes in the basket is the easiest way to get them out, that can’t be it.
Part of me hopes that I’ll run into a person who does this just so I can get some answers but part of me is scared to encounter such a person. Druggies and criminals in the building I can handle. Jessica Simpson I can’t.
