Worst Christmas Ever

During lunch at the Kappa house, everyone went around the table and told what they got for Christmas. A nice camera was the most common gift - all girls think they are great photographers. Don't tell them I said that.

One girl was a little bitter. She said she had a list of five things she wanted, and she only got two, along with several other gifts she did not want. I can sympathize. My mom's family all live on farms, and every year I am given a pocket knife by someone. The knives are all very swell, with real bone handles carved by the area hermit. There's only two hundred of those, I am told. Great. That will really increase the resell value.

I don't carry a knife. I've found that anything I would use a knife for, like opening packages or arteries, I can use a pen instead. And a pen has other uses. Some models, if clicked three times, explode a person's shirt. There was a James Bond marathon on Spike over New Year's Day.

The worst Christmas present I've ever been given was for Christmas my senior year of high school. I had just finished with my last game of football, and was undecided whether or not I would play in college. I asked for a box set of the works of C.S. Lewis. Instead, I got all of C.S. Lewis' works in one volume (how am I supposed to read a book that I can't hold up? It's like thumbing through an atlas) and a gift wrapped CD.

A CD? Maybe it's a good one. If not, I can always return it. And anyway, a Christmas gift never hurt anyone, except when Uncle John gave Pa Will a Remington. Pa Will had a cat infestation in his cattle barn that Christmas. He cleaned it out. It was horrible. My mom still refers to it as the Kitty Kat Massacre.

(Years later, only one cat survives from that event, and Pa Will has taken it in as a pet. My mom calls it Beyonce, because it's a survivor.)

I unwrapped the CD, and found that it wasn't a CD at all, but a picture inside of a clear plastic CD case. It was a picture of Jessica, the personal trainer at the Fayetteville Athletic Club. That night, I had a dream she was under my bed.

Jessica is the only woman to have ever thrown shot put and discus in the same Olympics. She lifted more weight than I did in any activity we practiced, and once she stood over me laughing as I vomited Mike and Ikes into a trash can.

I mentioned her before: I hated working with her so much that my sleep schedule derailed, and I would wake up at odd hours, get dressed, and drive to FCA, not bothering to check the time because I was too busy regretting my Christmas present.

But that's my family. When I was in eighth grade, I found out my dad bought me a weight vest for Christmas - the type of thing used for endurance training by collegiate athletes. When I made fun of it, he took it back and gave it to one of my friends who he thought would use it. I never regretted making fun of it.