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Author Topic: New column: Getting a hand for the holidays
Chris Bridges
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Getting a hand for the holidays

The holidays are fast approaching and, like many of you, I'm looking forward to waking up on Christmas morning and rushing downstairs with a giddy feeling of dread. This is because our family holiday traditions involve disembodied body parts.

I realize that unless you have bizarre, illegal, and unsavory habits, or you're Billy Bob Thornton, this may seem strange.

It began a few years back when my wife, Teres, on her way to get groceries, made the mistake of asking me if I wanted anything. I replied with the sort of playful, arrested puberty type of response that makes wives and girlfriends roll their eyes and reconsider the benefits of living alone, possibly with a nonverbal pet. She nodded and left as I went back to work chuckling, unaware of what I had wrought.

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quidscribis
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quote:
Teres was making me a woman, piece by piece, the way Dr. Frankenstein might have done if he had been forced to use layaway.
[ROFL]
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Icarus
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[Big Grin] Awesome!
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Chris Bridges
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I should mention that this is all entirely true, for you doubters out there. Although this year, as she's been caught up in Barbie reconstruction, I'm fearing armies of undead barbies attacking me Christmas morning...
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Scott R
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That was delightful, Chris.
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Elizabeth
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Ha ha ha.
Favorite line:

"It was after she gave me a porcelain hand on my birthday -- pale, white, reaching -- "

There is nothing that creeps me out more than a hand by itself, like those Dresden antique hands. (shudder)

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Goody Scrivener
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Aww, you didn't turn the leg into a lamp?
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Chris Bridges
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This one is, I believe, intended to display/store rings and other jewelry, like you might see at department store display cases. Here's something close. Ours looks more lifelike, though...
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Chris Bridges
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I have a leg lamp! She got me one for last Christmas, the leopard-skin/fishnet stocking design that Spencer Gifts finally put on clearance. It's in storage waiting for our living room remodeling.
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romanylass
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So...what do you get Teres besides pumpkin colored nighties?
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Brinestone
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lol
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Chris Bridges
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My presents to her rarely followed a theme, aside from "what would she really love that she doesn't even suspect exists." She's a huge BeeGees fan so her present in 1999 was tickets to their New Year's concert at the millenium. When she's obsessing on a new artistic interest I get her good quality equipment because she can't bring herself to buy anything but the cheapst versions she can find and I think she deserves the best. Also usually at least one boring thing she needs, one naughty thing she can open upstairs before the kids get up (while I open whatever naughty thing she got me), and one fun thing that has no purpose besides amusing the heck out of her on Christmas morning.

This year, like the last couple, we'll prolly spend the bulk of our cash on the kids and either get presents for the home or set aside cash for the two of us to do something together.

Next March is our 20th wedding anniversary, so I'm more interested in what we'll do then. We just talked about this, as a matter of fact. We're thinking of doing our honeymoon over again. We couldn't afford to go anywhere far away so instead we went to a ritzy hotel in Orlando and got pampered for a weekend. Presidential suite, massages, room service, the works. We also discussed a bed and breakfast in St Augustine or trying to get to somewhere a bit cooler. It may depend on what house repairs need doing before then [Smile]

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Toretha
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Wonderful article!
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Dragon
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[ROFL] literally.
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Bob_Scopatz
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Ah Chris!
Ah bliss!

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Synesthesia
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Hilarious
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mackillian
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[ROFL]

The best thing I got for my sister was a pack of batteries. I'd written a note on them that said "Gift Not Included" and wrapped those suckers up.

She opened them, laughed, and promptly threw them at me.

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Shan
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quote:
Originally posted by Dragon:
[ROFL] literally.

(Interpreted by pre-coffee Shan as "laugh my a** off)

Oh no!!!! Hey Chris - do you need that part?

*laughs wickedly and flees the thread*

*pops back in to ask*

Does anyone remember that Wendy's commercial that ends up with them saying "Parts is parts?"

Great article, Chris! [Big Grin]

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KarlEd
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That's great, mac!

Chris, this article more than any you've written so far makes me want to meet you and your wife some day. You seem like really cool, genuine people. [Smile]

When my ex, Douglas's dad passed away, we were cleaning out his dad's basement with his aunt and found this hideous mechanical Santa. It was about a foot tall, dressed in very faded red velvet (the edges were that sick yellow-red color one might find on a used band-aid) trimmed with dingy gray fur. It held a rusty bell. In it's better days it's eyes lit up and it would walk forward ringing the bell and shouting "Ho Ho Ho". Douglas turned it on and sat it on the floor. It made a grinding noise and then lumbered forward, ringing the bell. The eyes lit up with a demonic red light and it lurched a couple more times. It still said "Ho Ho Ho", but now the recorded voice was deep and gravely, and sounded more like a chain smoker insulting a hooker. Douglas's aunt looked down at it and then up at Douglas and said, "He would have wanted you to have that."

So we took it home where it sat (on its back) on the workbench in the basement. There must have been a short in the on/off switch because sometimes when we went down in the basement to get something it would spontaneously start up, evil little arms and legs waving in the air and hurling its little "HO HO HO" epithet. Never failed to scare the hell out of me.

Well, next Christmas we put it in a box, wrapped it with beautiful paper and took it to his aunt on Christmas Eve. She laughed so hard I though we might have killed her. Next year Douglas's sister got a "nice surprise" from their aunt. Now that he and I are no longer together, I wonder where the thing is. I imagine it's still traveling between his family members inflicting its evil on someone new each year. I gotta find something like it to spread the cheer in my family.

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mackillian
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Another thing we did was related to the summer camp where I used to work. See, there was an old, crack plastic statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). Every prank we pulled, it included the BVM, so it was called BVMing someone.

One year, we managed to spirit it away through the finagling of one of the priests and smuggle down to Connecticut. "We" meaning myself and another friend who happened to also live in Connecticut (I lived in NH, where the camp is/was and the camp director was the other Connecticut denizen). Anyway, Meg, my friend, dressed up the BVM with lights and all, wrote a little Christmas poem, and left the lit up BVM on the camp director's front lawn on Christmas Eve.

And SOMEHOW, I got connected to this, though I never physically touched the BVM that time, nor did I enter the state of Connecticut that month. *grumble*

...

Another time, I was given the charge of wrapping my sister's Christmas gifts. My sister has this uncanny (and by uncanny I mean sick and unnatural) ability to shake a gift and guess what it is, even if it doesn't rattle or anything. It's...unspeakable, that's what it is. So that year, I stole my mother's decorative tins, my father's duct tape, and set to work. I separated things out (such as a fuzzy pink slipper set intended for my sister) and shoved them into various tins, then duct tape them shut. That gave them odd shapes and weights and those things wouldn't rattle or shift in the slightest.

I happily set my sister's oddly wrapped gifts underneath the tree. As soon as she noticed, she lit upon them to shake and see what they were. Two minutes later, she finds me in the kitchen, looks me right in the eye and whispers, "You bitch."

Our clueless mother says, "Wasn't it nice of your sister to wrap your presents?" and flits out of the room.

My sister's reponse was to flip me off and stalk away.

Ah, Christmas.

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Shan
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I remember you telling that story a couple of years ago, mack - it made me laugh then, and it does now.

My best Christmas prank was on my brother who sneakily opened and rewrapped presents. So, after I knew he had done so, I took the present completely out, rewrapped, and gave him an empty box. *mischevious*

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Eaquae Legit
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KarlEd! Don't make me laugh like that in the library!

[ROFL] [ROFL]

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whiskysunrise
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[ROFL]
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BannaOj
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has anyone from your local area sent you e-mails about their odd gifts yet?

AJ

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Chris Bridges
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Sadly, no. But feel free to take up the slack!
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littlemissattitude
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quote:
The head had been precariously attached to it but has since fallen on hard times due to constant cat attacks and is now missing in action.
What is it with cats and heads? When I was young my cat, aptly named Tiger, was always attacking and detaching my Barbie doll's head. Eventually, it disappeared (the head, that is), and we occasionally accused Tiger of having finally eaten it. He never denied it. [Big Grin]

The funniest gift-giving event in my family was surely the time my dad got my mom a Polaroid camera and all the accessories for Christmas. That was back in the days when the prints didn't pop out of the front of the camera, and when you had to unfold the camera to use it. At first, my dad was going to put everything - camera, film, flash attachment, flash bulbs, and whatever else - in the camera bag he had also bought her, and wrap everything together. But, as I was consulting in the wrapping process, I got the bright idea to wrap everything separately, and my dad decided that it was a deliciously hilarious thing to do. So, we emerged from the back of the house with a whole pile of wrapped packages, some of them very small. We completely fooled her.

But that wasn't even the best part. He had bought everything at a camera shop, and he wrote a check for it. As he was writing the check, he realized that he couldn't write "........Camera Shop" in the check register. My mom, who wrote most of the checks in the family, would have known instantly what her present was. He thought about it a minute, smiled craftily, and wrote something down. I found out a little while later what he had written when my mom held up the open check book and asked him, "What is 'None of your damn business' supposed to mean?"

His reply? An innocent smile and "Just what it says." You have to take all this in the context, I guess, that this was a couple who never, as far as I know of in their entire marriage, ever fought, argued, or even bickered.

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Chris Bridges
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If we're getting into Christmas present cruelty, that's a whole different column...

"Antagonizing your loved ones is a proud Christmas tradition, and my mom was the master. The size, shape, and weight of a box were never reliable guides to its contents. Small items like jewelry might be in small packages, or they might be in the box the tree came in. Larger items, like a car, might get taken apart and wrapped up in 1,117 different little boxes and bags, with the last one containing a wrench set and the keys."

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Ophelia
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Chris, your wife rocks!
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theCrowsWife
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When I was in high school, I bought my best friend a book for Christmas. To disguise what it was, I put it in a plastic flower pot and stuffed tissue paper in to keep it from moving. I then wrapped the pot and stuck a fake flower in the top. I wish I had had a camera for the look on her face when she saw it.

That year, she did not guess what I gave her.

--Mel

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