Funny things happen at Christmas. And things not so
funny.
One of the best stories at our house is about the year we
unloaded a ceiling-high Christmas tree from the roof of our station
wagon, heaved it down to the driveway, lugged it across the snowy
yard and into the living room, and began to put on the first string
of lights when what to our wondrous eyes should appear but two big
eyes staring out from between the branches!
It was a baby owl, still standing upright after being
knocked around for the better part of an hour and bounced around in
various vertical, horizontal and diagonal positions.
This year, a cranky old geezer around the corner from us
finally went over to the dark side and beat the air out of his
whole string of blow-up reindeers.
Another guy in the neighborhood slipped off his roof while
trying to string Chinese icicle lights on the gutter. It’s was a
low-riding ranch house, so he made it.
What’s even worse is being that unemployed guy in his
freezing front yard trying to get last year’s blinking Jesus from
China to light up again this year. Funny, but if we’d just start
manufacturing all that Christmas paraphernalia here at home there’d
be a better chance that both that guy and the lights would still be
working.
Money-wise, the international bottom line for Christmas is
that China’s rising military, thanks to being on the receiving end
of boatloads of our decorating dollars, has more money to spend in
expanding its stock of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic
missiles while, simultaneously by way of the START treaty, the
nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia are set to be
slashed.
President Obama, spelling out his vision for a no-nukes
world via a means wholly consistent with his bias for leveling and
redistribution, proclaimed that only the world’s two top dogs will
be required to have their arms cut and controlled. “We’re not
asking any other countries to do anything,” he
explained.
That’s not unlike Obama’s goal of hitting “the rich” with
higher taxes and more regulations, painting them as greedy and in
dire need of external controls, while simultaneously “not asking”
nearly half the U.S. population to pay a dime in federal income
taxes.
All told, doctors warn that the days immediately after
Christmas are the most risky, given the season’s stress. I noticed
more swearing and horns blowing at the intersections. My wife
always says it’s my fault when she hears a horn, even if I’m just
sitting in the yard. I’d say the increased honking is due to an
oversupply of miserable people, a pre-existing condition that’s
fully disconnected from any of my unorthodox driving
maneuvers.
My favorite story this year at our house is that I was
cleaning up for a party and emptied about five pounds of art
supplies belonging to my 8-year-old granddaughter, Grace, from the
bottom two shelves of our dining room bookcase. “Go through it
carefully to see what you might like,” I told her, handing over a
black garbage bag full of colored sheets of
felt, crayons, construction paper, pens, chalk
and a couple naked Barbies.
I got a phone call the next day from my daughter-in-law,
Lisa. “Did you want to throw away this list?,” she asked, referring
to something I received via e-mail in 1998 entitled “How would you
like to be Bill Clinton’s friend?” It was a three-page list of 45
dead people directly connected with Bill Clinton — murders,
alleged suicides, strangely exploding planes with Ron Brown, etc.,
aboard, a few decapitations, a White House intern killed at
Starbucks, everyone from Vince Foster to Ed Willey, Kathleen’s
husband, plus 11 dead Clinton bodyguards.
I have no idea how the Clinton murder list ended up in
Grace’s art bag. I asked Lisa to put Grace on the phone. “Grace,
what do you think of that list?,” I inquired. “I think,” she said,
“it would be scary to be Bill Clinton’s friend.”
