11/27

After what seemed like the longest three-day work week in history, the Thanksgiving holiday finally fell with a crash onto the calendar. It’s been a tumultuous year, a year of upheaval, and so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the holidays turned out the same way.

After being heralded for about two days, I finally managed to see my long-lost sister Thursday morning. She was supposed to make it back from school Tuesday afternoon, but she didn’t end up getting home until about 1 a.m. and slept through my pre-work saunter around the house Wednesday morning. Via e-mail at work, I invited her to tag along with my friends and I to see the newest Alien opus; I bought her and a friend of hers tickets, only to find myself $12 poorer and standing outside the theater for half an hour. In a tumultuous year, it’s nice to know some things (and people) never change. I guess it’s something to be thankful for. I’d be much more thankful for $12.

I would also be thankful for a sincere Day Off. Although I was not technically working during the four-day weekend, I was in a constant state of motion.... I’m slowly coming to the sticky conclusion that something (no idea what) has got to change about the holidays. I have joined the ranks of my adult cousins, who used to come over every Thanksgiving mid-morning with their boyfriends/girlfriends (now their husbands/wives), stuff cranberries down their throats, and run off at about 5:00 to eat an entire second dinner with the Significant Others’ families. I always thought they were loons. I’m a loon now; my girlfriend and I ate dinner with my family at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I was halfway across town with somebody else’s stuffing on my plate by 4:00. It must be love; I wouldn’t do that much hurrying to escape wolves.

It’s completely against my nature to do that much rushed family bonding, even in exchange for food. I figure I’ll snap eventually and start pelting people with corn niblets if we don’t work out some sort of compromise. Logically, we should probably alternate families each year from now on (assuming we’re still speaking to each other after she sees what she’s getting for Christmas). Of course, that’s a slippery slope; cutting out somebody’s family once makes it all too easy to do it twice in a row, then three times... before you know it, we’re spending every holiday with her folks and I’m going years without spending time with my family.

Don’t get me wrong. This would be a good thing. This weekend, I realized it’ll probably be about a decade before my family holidays are any fun again.

They say that the true joy of the holidays once you grow up is experiencing them through the eyes of innocent little children, and you know, that really is a crock. At least, I think it is; none of the children I know are innocent.

Last year, it was just Timmy and Adam. Their pirate-like exploits, while famous and horrifying, were only the exploits of two small men, one of whom could not walk. As we kept them from setting themselves on fire for several hours last Thanksgiving, it did not occur to us that every woman in the room was pregnant. Now, we find ourselves besieged by a terrible, whirling army of thirty-inch banshees, slobbering like bulldogs on Novocain. There are five in all: newborn and relatively sedate Jon-Jon; eerily peaceful Nicole; the Blitzkrieg Brothers, Timmy and Adam; and Baby Blitzkrieg, Sean, who although he cannot speak is quite clearly happy just to still be alive after almost a year with his brothers. As individuals, they seem sweet enough. As a unit, they seem like locusts. And Nicole’s mom is pregnant. With a boy.

I mean, everyone has a right to raise a family as they see fit, but... these women should have gotten together and coordinated or something! There should have been a time table drawn up, some kind of chart maybe. “Okay, Julie and I will have a baby each next year, and then we’ll alternate every following year. We’ve taken a family vote, and you’re not allowed to have any more until someone teaches Timmy that spitting on people is not a form of entertainment.” Better yet, they could have shared children between themselves, because God knows Timmy and Adam are not a one-woman job.

Timmy and his grandpa came over first thing Thursday morning, and he was ready for activity. God bless him, he tried to be good; he just moved too fast for his sources of stimulation. Out came the arts and crafts materials, like the infantry in a war against boredom. He got glue and safety scissors thrown at him in a timid flurry of encouragement; “My God,” I thought, “maybe if he takes Poland he’ll leave the rest of Europe alone.”

He made kites out of yarn and looseleaf, some of which were shaped like bananas for some reason. He made one of those “it’s a turkey but it’s also an outline of my hand” things. That was just the first fifteen minutes of the day; nobody else had even arrived yet, and he was already out of stuff to do. My sister, in a fit of inspiration, took him into my room. Into my room, to play with my Star Wars figures.

I don’t know if I have made this clear in my journals-- I certainly don’t seem to have made it very clear to my sister-- but I love my toys. They are valuable, and not necessarily in ways that money can quantify. They are my hobby; they are my passion; they are one of my identifying characteristics, however sad that might be. Any “playing” with them that I do is very different from what a three year old might do, and it is certainly different than any playing Timmy might do. At least, that was my suspicion. I have proof now.

Too late, I realized where they had gone and dashed into my room. Just then, there was a moment of perfect

clear

silence. The split second was crystallized like a life-sized three-dimensional photo, perfectly preserved by the tense quiet. Timmy was overwhelmed by the sheer cornucopia of plastic men that spread out before him, and I thought to myself in that instant, How could you, a grown man, possibly tell a three-year-old child that he can’t play with toys because they have to sit on your dresser? Look what you have become. You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch. Let them be enjoyed as God intended them. You’ll be standing right here; no harm will come to anything.

It was all that stupid thinking that kept me from reacting in time.

Timmy grabbed Jabba the Hutt by his tail and began to swing him like a broom/baseball bat across the dresser. Men and their weapons scattered in a blizzard of pieces all across the room, and poorly-constructed playsets came crashing down into hard wood. And as he did it, Timmy sang, “Break break break break break.”

The dresser clear of order, the room clear of happiness, Timmy dropped Jabba on the floor too. He turned around, looked up at me, and smiled.

“All your toys are broken,” he said.

“You’re broken, you twisted little troll!” I spat as I reached for his trachea. It was too late, though; having his life threatened for more then two seconds bored him, and he had already run away to hurt someone else. My sister followed, wisely leaving the room. I picked up the pieces. Of all the items in the room, I saw that the only one damaged was the AT-AT. That was when I realized I wouldn’t enjoy the holidays for a long time. We were no longer a family; we were brat ranchers. I did not remember getting a vote in the matter.

And so it was all day long. Children everywhere, doing things of which their parents strongly disapproved. No one could stop them. They outnumbered us. As a countermeasure, everyone in the room who was a mother-- including my mother-- decided that their only chance for survival would be to mother every child, no matter who it legally belonged to. As a result, the afternoon was filled with three people at a time barking contradictory orders at children who didn’t even recognize them. No wonder they don’t listen to anybody; if they did, they wouldn’t have time to do anything else. At one point, the words “Adam, get down on the floor,” “Adam, get over here,” and “Adam, sit on the couch” were shouted simultaneously. Adam made a face like he was stuck on a broken merry-go-round and punched Nicole in the shoulder. Nicole didn’t seem to mind too much.

And all through the day, the same thought repeated itself: Why would you give a kid a __________ ? Every five minutes, I witnessed some new atrocity of bad thinking.

Why would you give a kid a permanent marker?
Why would you give a kid a cup full of sugar water ten minutes before nap time?
Why would you give a kid anything that makes such red stains?
Why would you give a kid a crumbly cookie and then escort him onto our new carpet?
Why would you ever give that kid a baseball bat? Ever?
Why would you give a kid instruction on how to lock you out of a room? (We all got locked out of the bathroom to celebrate the full meals we’d just eaten.)

My favorite Thanksgiving memory, without a doubt, was at the end of the evening when my girlfriend and I had returned from her family gathering to search for survivors at my house. Timmy and the others were back in cute mode, and my girlfriend was playing with them.

Timmy looked at her. “You’ve got a friend in me and Adam,” he said to her.

She smiled. “Dude, you won’t even know me at Christmas.”

The three year old replied, “Dude, I don’t know you now.”

The video we were watching ran out. Star Wars was on the Sci-Fi Channel. Timmy’s mom said that he couldn't watch movies like that, because he got rowdy and violent from watching them. He’d never even seen Star Wars. Don’t want to encourage violence by watching movies, after all. We immediately turned it off.

Five minutes later, Timmy went over to the diaper bag and pulled out a 4’ long glow-in-the-dark lightsaber. They’d brought it with them in the diaper bag. He wasn’t even with them when they packed the diaper bag; he was with his grandpa. I guess they thought they might have to fight off some space pirates on the way over. Instead, he beat my girlfriend and I with it. At least, until I broke it in half. This seemed to upset him, but I couldn’t help my outburst; I’ve seen Star Wars several times.