Merry Christmas!
Actually, based on my Christmas experience today, I'd like to make my first New Years Resolution:
Next year, I resolve not to make fun of my sister for giving me Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide for Christmas.
Now, you're probably thinking that I'm a really horrible person for making fun of my sister for the gift she gave me. But please allow me to defend myself
She's given me Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide for Christmas for the past 8 years.
8 years now, on Christmas morning, I open up my gift from my sister, and it's the newest version of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. It's on the cusp of becoming a family tradition.
And, all my jokes tend to revolve around stuff like, "8 years now. Would it kill you to be creative?"
The jokes themselves are becoming a tradition now, too. After she gave it to me for three years in a row, I started joking about it. This year, though, I started joking about it a lot earlier. December 1, I started joking about it. The few times I saw her this month, I was all like, "Oh, have you bought me the Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide yet?" and "Yup, gonna be sittin' around the ol' Christmas tree on Christmas morning opening up Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide because, you know, that's what you're giving me." And she'd get all indignant like, "Oh, that's what you think!" and "I'm not giving it to you this year. Nope nope." She almost had me convinced.
Anyway, after a month of jokes like that, she plopped her gift in my lap, I opened it up, and it was...Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. I looked up with a smug, self-satisfied look, and I saw that she actually had tears in her eyes. "I feel so bad for giving this to you, now!" she said. That never happened before.
Later in the day, we had serious words about it. I said, quite seriously this time, "Why can't you show any creativity?" and she gave defences like, "But it's such a reliable gift!" and "You're the easist person to shop for!" and "It's like our thing!"
She's still kind of mad at me. So, next year, I won't make any jokes about getting the new Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide from her.
Actually, I've been thinking a lot about this. My family's gotten so paranoid about getting me gifts, mainly because I'm very specific about what I want. The best example is DVDs. I'm a home theatre enthusiast. And for my DVDs, I get into specifics like, "I want the widescreen edition" and "I want the 2-disc deluxe edition, not the 1-disc regular edition." I'm certian that my family's convinced that, on Christmas morning, I'll probably hurl the DVDs I got across the room and go, "NO NO NO!! I wanted the 4-disc mega-ultra edition! This is just the 2-disc special editon! RARGH! MARK SMASH PUNY CHRISTMAS!"
So, I'm going to expand upon the resolution I originally made about making fun of my sister for giving me Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. My revised resolution is:
Next Christmas, I resolve to NOT make a Christmas wish list, erradicate all "want" from my mind, and just be grateful and enjoy whatever I get.
Oh, and yes, my latest column's up. This week, I ask Where Have All the Rhinos Gone?
" Well, we’ve got another federal election upon us. We started with a Liberal minority, and it looks like we will, again, get another Liberal minority. But, until the votes are counted that becomes a certainty, we’re going to be faced with a few more weeks of TV ads where the Liberals defend their record, and everyone else attacks the Liberals. It’s enough to drive a man batty. It makes one long for the good old days of the Rhino party."
Read it all!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to rebuffing my brother's suggestion that we go into Edmonton tomorrow and hit the Boxing Day Sales. I did that with him last year, and trust me, I used to think Shibuya on a Sunday afternoon was crowded....
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