Saturday, December 20, 2003

Use razor blades to tell the future.
241712 minutes

For the first time in years, Christmas comes all too slowly. This is only the second Christmas since I was 16 that I will not be working through the holiday. Hopefully the idleness won't drive me crazy. It's also the first holiday season I've honestly looked forward too in a long time.

I can remember being small, and just feeling like December was the longest month in the whole world, like Christmas would *never* get here, just waiting and waiting, and asking grownups how far away it was, and why can't we open presents now, and having a general feel of frustration.

Left alone far too often when school was out, I learned to slit scotch tape with a razor blade in such fine strokes that wrapping paper wasn't cut on packages underneath the tree. Thus I would unwrap all my presents at the first opportunity, and re-wrap them so well that my mother never noticed. My curiosity was such that I practiced my expertise on the presents of others as well. My mother thought I was nearly clairvoyant in my present-guessing abilities, and I didn't disabuse her.

"What do you think it is?" she ask, sure that I'd never guess.

"Hmmm...lots of little parts... medium package...I'm going to guess it's a chemistry set!"

My mom's face would try not to register that I'd "guessed" that very thing. She went through elaborate wrapping rituals to try and confuse me; when that didn't work, she'd just hide presents in the house and vow not to put my things out until Christmas Day. Which would only leave me in the house alone to find them. After a few years of this - by which time I was old enough to not care - she took to hiding things in my father's workshop, a folly because things get lost easily there, and once hidden, may not surface until Easter, at least, if not a few years down the line.

For the record, I still dislike surprises, and will do nearly anything to find out what I'm being given before the day. I often tell people what I'm getting them. It only seems polite.

I work Monday and Tuesday and then I'm off to Nashville for almost 2 whole weeks. I'll try to put up three more Nashville stories while I'm there.

Hugs and wishes, people I love best, it's almost time to party.

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