The Shot Put Incident

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If it’s too early for Christmas stories, sue me.    This is my blog and this is a Christmas story.  (Heh, heh.  Got a little defensive there.  Maybe even I think it’s too early. ) (No, wait–I never think that.)

It was not our fault.  John’s sport, afterall, was shot put.  What were we to do, relegated as we were, to the upper story?  And on Christmas Eve!  Let the reader judge. 

From the time we were very young–too young to really know that we were being raised by Santa Claus–we’d rise long before dawn on Christmas morning to sights and sounds that would cause any child’s vision to dance with sugar plums!  I can’t say I remember this, but I half wonder if we weren’t roused out of sleep,  before we were old enough to ‘get it’.  There were some people in the house for whom Christmas would have lost it’s luster if it had begun in daylight.   ‘Some people’ would be our father.

Mr. and Mrs. Santa would have Christmas carols playing on the hi-fi, ‘big’ presents open in front of the tree (which was already half-hidden behind the heaps and mounds of  wrapped presents!), only the tree lights on and the smell of coffee completing the scene.  In our peripheral vision, we sensed a table heavily loaded with sweet things and savory–but we were fairly single-minded.  This scene usually included lots of frenetic motion and squealing (on my part).  For this reason, I have no idea how John handled it all.  He probably sauntered in, nodding his head approvingly and thinking to himself, “Someday, I’ll be Santa Claus and this’ll all be mine.”  I can’t say because I don’t know.  I was too busy making noise.

What I do know is that he relished the early hour as much as anyone.  I was ‘anyone’.  That made us perfect partners for childhood crime.  If we ever actually slept on Christmas Eve, I’ve also forgotten.  The year that sealed my parents’ fate as Christmas morning push-overs, John and I checked our clocks–I was in second grade so, naturally, I had a good grip on reading timepieces–and decided it was TIME.  We just walked down the hall to the folks’ room and announced that Christmas morning had arrived.  Dad-Claus also looked at his clock and told us to go back to our rooms.  He DIDN’T tell us to go back to sleep.  He never did.  He is the funnest, cheeriest guy in the world, just for your information, dear reader.  And our jolly mother is his perfect foil!  As I told you:  Mr. and Mrs. Santa.  Christmas comes when it comes.  One doesn’t  postpone the inevitable.

They rolled out of bed, started the coffee, plugged in the tree lights, turned on the music and called my aunt and uncle, who had foolishly asked to join us for the festivities.  When Aunt Patty answered the phone, she responded to the announcement, “It’s time!”, with a long silence.  When she finally mustered the strength to speak, she asked,  ”Jimmy, do you have any idea what time it is?”   Hahahahaha!  Of course he didn’t!  Who can read anything, much less a clock, at 3:30 in the morning?   They came.  Christmas began at 3:45 am, that most auspicious of years.

We grew older and wiser–this does not translate to sleeping in on Christmas morning.  Duh.  It translated to having to use our wits when we were READY for Christmas.  We were probably twelve and fifteen, at the time of ‘the incident’, and our bedrooms were on the second floor.  Ordinarily, that presented no problems.  We could see the rides at Broomfield Days.  We could see the park.  We could get out on the garage roof, if we saw the necessity.  I’m guessing John may have seen the necessity.  He can set me straight later.  But it really put a crimp in our Christmas ’style’.  We were UP.  Christmas had arrived!  How to get the news to the Claus’s….

Where our parents had made their large mistake was in only carpetting our particular rooms.  They left the hallway NAKED, and therefore subject to NOISE.  Should we jump and stomp and pound on the hall floor?  Oh, please.  Any neanderthal could do that.  We wanted something subtle.  Something smooth.  We wanted to make a statement about our combined brilliance.  So, naturally, we decided to roll John’s shot put back and forth along that perfectly unadorned hall for as long as it took.  Wouldn’t you?   What would Mozart have done?  Or Ronald Reagen?  It was the only possible road.  How else were the S. Claus’s to know? 

By the way, it didn’t take long at all.

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Tags: Christmas, lights, Santa Claus, sleep, stories