Avril Lavigne 'Let Go'

In case you were unaware, I like to screw around with people.

I don’t ask anyone to rise and kill. I don’t ask that they accept Jesus as their personal savior. I don’t ask that they join the Mickey Mouse Club.

I like to find the breaking points and just where my friends and family stand with public embarrassment.

My friend Sean Whitley is the same way. He has found a few of my breaking points. One comes to mind… Sean going all John ‘Animal House’ Belushi, sucking down jello squares from bowls at a Chinese buffet joint.

Just yesterday I thought I’d give it a shot with my nephew Preston, my sister Tina, and my father Delbert. We started towards West Virginia before the sun came up on a Saturday. We witnessed a few car accidents with at least one fatality during our yearly Christmas pilgrimage to our grandparents.

We had gotten a call halfway through our journey. My father answered his cell with his right hand and held it to his left ear while driving with his left hand. We came to an incline on the highway. My father was trying to figure out which hand to shift gears with instead of handing the phone to me. We started drifting to the right and I put my hand on the steering wheel to guide us away from a mailbox that was in our near future. My father got his bearings and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

I’m not sure, but I think Preston pulled a slug from his hip flask. (I'm kidding)

We were asked to pick up a half gallon of whole milk along with the pre-planned deli tray order.

We pulled into the parking lot and I noticed that the grocery store wasn’t called Ashley’s IGA any longer. My father told me that the Ashley family had sold out to “Jeweller’s” or something like that. I didn’t take time to digest the new name.

As we were opening the doors and spilling out of Tina’s SUV for the first stretch after about an hour and 15 minute drive. Dad stepped out and said, “Deli tray” as he counted down an index finger. Preston said, “Half gallon of whole milk.”

It was at this point that I noticed a woman walking towards her car from the store. I added to that list by saying, “And porno mags!” just as the woman got next to her car and well within hearing distance.

Preston busted out laughing, but Tina and my father just went on about their business. They didn’t flinch. They didn’t shoot me a “shut the hell up” look. They didn’t laugh. They just slipped on their jackets to walk around funny while working out their kinks.

They just didn’t seem to care. They were miles away from cracking.

I believe they have definitely become immune to anything that may come out of my mouth… Or they’re going deaf.

Gorillaz 'Gorillaz'

If you personally know me, then it’s no surprise that I dislike the Christmas season.

It’s not because I have a problem with greed, gluttony, consumerism, children, Santa Claus, Hanukkah, new electronics, Christianity, or even Kwanza. I live and let live.

My dislike of the Christmas season came at an early age.

Oh sure, it was great getting up at an ungodly hour to see what the jolly old elf snuck into the house during the night as well as ripping through other gifts. That was awesome. What turned me against the holiday was being forced to participate in almost every church Christmas play.

My mother was typically involved as the director or assistant director or the music director, so she had me and my sisters involved. I never wanted to be included. Wearing itchy costumes and memorizing painfully bad dialogue wasn’t my idea of a “good time”. It seemed endless and I found it painful practicing the plays every week. And practices usually cranked up in the beginning of November.

I despised it. My sisters never seemed to care. If they did, I was busy with my mind “checked out” to notice.

Now I’m not trying to be sacrilegious… Seriously, how many times do we need the birth of Christ shoved down our throats?

No room. Check. Manger. Check. Large star. Check. Three wise men. Check. Animals. Check. Angel appears. Check. Christ is born. Yeah, we know. We’ve heard it all about for two thousand years.

Occasionally, there would be new plays with the same kind of messages along with new and different songs. But it still sucked major ass to be involved with them. I just soldiered through and kept my bitching at a minimum.

When I turned 18 I wasn’t required to participate or even go to church. So I took full advantage of that freedom and haven’t looked back. But I still cringe when my mother tries the guilt-trip routine with “all I want for Christmas is for you to come to our church Christmas program”.

I’ve given in to it a few times. I’m not a completely heartless bastard.

I worked in retail for over a decade of my life and that also added to my dislike of the Holiday season. Traffic gets worse. I’ve seen fistfights over parking spaces. People are less polite. It was hellish and I truly appreciate the folks that work in retail during this time of year. I go out of my way to be polite, personable, and pleasant to all the “associates” throughout the stores when I’m there. I try to do the majority of my purchases online so I don’t have to deal with the rest of humanity. I have the distinct impression that they’ll tap dance all over Stephen Hawking with golf spikes to get the hottest sale item for Christmas. And my mood becomes that of a rabid dog when I’m in long lines filled with the last-minute undecided and restless, sticky-handed children.

I don’t care for decorating the house for any holiday either. It seems unwise spending money on things that sit 10 months or more in storage. So if Chigger wants to decorate for the holidays, she can knock herself out. I’ll be doing something else with a beer in my hand. I’ll help with some heavy lifting, but I draw the line at distributing and tacking up holiday eye candy.

Holiday movies?

Not a fan of those either. They’re usually a musical or filled with heartwarming crap. ‘Die Hard’ is great and I absolutely love ‘The Waltons: The Homecoming’. It’s hilariously bad.

I’ve never seen the majority of the “holiday favorites”. And that includes the television specials like ‘Grinch’, ‘Rudolph’, ‘Frosty’, and ‘Peanuts’. I have absolutely no desire and never had it.

Chigger asked me a couple of years ago to watch ‘A Christmas Story’ with her during a week long marathon. It became so painful for her that she eventually threw the remote control, said a few curse words, and declared me to be an unstable human being.

Sorry… You hear about the movie in great detail EVERY SINGLE YEAR by your friends that love it, it kinda loses all its luster.

And for some reason, I got ‘A Christmas Story’ t-shirt from my niece Gracie this year. Either she or her mother is under the impression that I have held Gracie while watching that “holiday classic”. Someone is under the belief that it’s one of my favorites. Manufactured or not, I can live with the gift of a starfish shaped kid wrapped in a coat with an “amusing” phrase on a red shirt. I don’t want to seem ungrateful nor do I want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I just can’t understand how someone I grew up with could overlook my lifelong dislike of holidays. Oh well.

I wish folks a “Merry Christmas” with a smile. I don’t DARE wish someone I know that’s a Christian a “Happy Holiday”. They’ve got a real chip on their shoulder about that one. They get agitated and pontificate on “the reason for the season” along with a healthy dose of a conspiracy to take Christ out of Christmas by the flaming liberals.

If it didn’t take so long to calm them down, I would probably find it more amusing. I have never had the riot act read to me by a Jewish person if I give them a “Happy Holiday” or a “Merry Christmas”. But it’s been my observation that Baptists do like their drama.

In closing, I hope everyone reading this had a wonderful holiday season. Now lets get this New Year’s thing over with and give it all a rest for 10 months.