'Twas the day after Christmas

’Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the house

Not a creature was stirring; we still were half-sauced

From the egg nog and whiskey, the cases of beer

That Uncle Phil brought to spread holiday cheer.

The stockings, still hung by the chimney with care,

Are now raided and empty, and quite worse for wear;

Between Dave’s model cars and the dolls for the girls,

I’ve got roughly the messiest house in the world.

Betwixt paper for wrapping and bows for the loot,

The living room looks like a drunken galoot

Has rampaged and stomped and gone kickin’ and slappin’

Which is sorta the truth, ’cause that’s kinda what happened.

The culprits were two: It was Bobby and Sue!

Our cousins from Calais, and Caribou, too;

Nether would stop at the third or fourth drink,

So stay out of the bathroom – it still really stinks.

The floor is a tangle of boxes and trash,

And sadly gone missing are both of our cats;

Attracted by gift bags, they dove in head first,

We really should find them lest they die of thirst.

The day was a blur, but there’s this much I know:

Never again will I hang mistletoe.

I had hung it in hopes of receiving a kiss,

But the only thing touching my lips was a fist;

Auntie Gertrude, you see, did not like her new hat,

And rather than give me a small, gentle slap,

She clocked me and shouted and called me bad words –

I’m a “dunce” and a “boob” and a “big, stinking turd.”

Forays into baking likewise were disaster;

The cookies burned quickly, the pies even faster.

The pudding was lumpy, the turkey disgusting –

I dined on mixed nuts ’till my gut was a-busting.

That likely explains why I’m feeling so sick;

Subsisting on snack food is quite a mean trick.

Combine that with booze and a cake shaped like Santa,

My diet today is a box of Mylanta.

Nobody seemed to be jazzed by my gifts;

Each one was a strikeout, a swing and a whiff.

Some new braces for Sally, and glasses for Luke –

They looked real bummed out, like they wanted to puke.

The problem, I think, was my shopping was lazy;

It all was online, so remembering’s hazy.

You fall in a trance, and you buy some real junk,

It’s easy to slip into kind of a funk.

The problem with looking for stuff on a laptop

Is endless distraction, which packs quite a wallop;

You’re purchasing crap, which is why you earn scorn –

That should warn you to never be blinded by porn.

“On eBay! On Newegg!

On Etsy and Bulktix!

On Bookswim, on Gamefly,

On Etoys and Netflix!

From the guts of my laptop

Plugged into the wall,

I’ve got my free shipping,

So to hell with the mall!”

That once was my mantra; it worked for a while,

But forever ago was the last time I smiled

At the Santas and snowmen in storefronts galore,

Which brighten our downtowns and add to the lore

Of a season for giving, and taking it in;

Of quaffing some egg nog (and maybe some gin)

At a neighborhood tavern, across from a store

Where Ma and Pa Whatsit have items galore

They made each by hand – so take THAT, Amazon!

I fear that the holiday really has gone

Too glitzy, too glammy, too downright commercial;

We bank on convenience and shipping that’s free ’till

We load up on items that nobody likes;

The dollhouses, bird houses, doggies and bikes

Are replaced by dull presents – enough is enough;

It isn’t the point, see. The point is our love.

It’s corny, I know, to convey such a thought;

It’s hackneyed and cliché and icky like snot.

It’s true, though, that family is what it’s about -

Not products that clean up the shower stall grout.

It’s corny, I know, to convey such a thought;

It’s hackneyed and cliché and icky like snot.

It’s true, though, that family is what it’s about,

Not products that clean up the shower stall grout.

Remembering crazy events this past Christmas

Reminds me that they may be weird, but that I'm blessed

To have such an interesting clan I can call mine;

I may have blown presents, but there'll always be time

To tell them I love them and show them respect

With a word or a gesture, or even a text;

The bathroom still smells like despair and stale beer,

But think of it this way: There's always next year.

East coast wrappers

Everybody’s got talents. Some people can sing a pretty tune or dance in rhythm to a sonorous waltz; others can swallow swords while juggling bowling pins with one hand and humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in a lilting falsetto. Pretty sure I saw that on the Internet once.

 

Both feats are impressive, but this is the time of year when my amazement at these skills is reduced to insignificance by a talent so shockingly simple, yet so frustratingly out-of-reach, that it takes all of my willpower to keep from drowning myself in a bowl of figgy pudding.

 

Adequately wrapping a present. Now that’s a skill.

 

Regarding adept gift-wrapping as worthy of genuine awe probably places me in a small minority. Most presents, whether tucked underneath Christmas trees or arranged in glittering storefront displays, look as though they’ve been wrapped by someone who knows what they’re doing. The explanation for this is likely simple: Most people know what they’re doing. We’re talking about placing a strip of paper around a box, for cryin’ out loud, not programming landing instructions into a lunar module.

 

As many competent gift-wrappers as there seem to be, though, I can’t count myself among their ranks. Certain tasks, no matter how basic, are simply beyond the grasp of some. “Some,” of course, being a euphemism for “those of us lacking in motor skills and patience.”

 

Think of a typical present you’ll receive for Christmas. Nothing amiss, right? The paper is smooth and taut, conforming perfectly to the contours of the box. There’s a delicate bow perched atop the shimmering package, a solid color to offset the gift’s snowman-and-reindeer motif. Maybe there’s a well-placed tag with your name on it. It’s the kind of presentation you’ve been expecting for years, because the people in your life who buy you things either know how to wrap, or know enough to bring their cargo to the skilled gift-wrapping professionals at the mall. Rarely do you find yourself sitting under your tree on Christmas morning with a monstrosity in your hand, turning it this way and that, and muttering to yourself, “What the (bleep) is this?”

 

Unless you’re a member of my family.

 

If you’re in the Lagasse clan, or otherwise warrant a gift from me, then you’re in for a unique visual experience. First of all, I lack consistent access to quality wrapping paper. With a small family, and not many items to purchase, it’s just never at the forefront of my mind to actually go out and buy some. This turns every gift-wrapping session into a last-minute, frenzied search for any materials I can use; one year I used the cover of a Time magazine. Which doesn’t sound all that absurd, until you consider that the cover photo that week was Saddam Hussein protruding from a tank. Hey mom, merry Christmas! Death to infidels!

 

In recent years, my job has given me access to reams of newspaper that’s adequately suited for the purpose. To keep the spirit festive, I typically employ the Sunday comics pages for my wrapping endeavors; the Hussein experiment highlighted the deficiencies of wrapping material that’s plastered with photos of war-torn cities and smug dictators. Garfield and Luann don’t always serve as the most Christmasy of themes, but when opening presents, it’s better to see a cat scarfing lasagna than militarized police envoys whacking protesters upside their heads with bamboo poles.

 

Even with that consideration in mind, the newsprint idea only works if you can pull off a clean wrapping job. This is my ever-vexing Achilles’ heal. When I’m done camouflaging my gift, it looks like a bomb that was covered in old Beetle Bailey strips and then detonated in transit. There are beaver dams that have been assembled with more talent. It’s fortunate that I’ve only got a few items to buy each year; if I had a sprawling, Full House-type family, the floor under the tree would resemble the bottom of a bird cage, minus the dried poop.

 

I’ve tried. I really have. On extremely rare occasions, I’ve done a less-than-embarassing job, giving me a jolt of holiday confidence that lasts for about five minutes. Then it’s on to the next item, and when it comes out looking as though it were assembled by an epileptic spider monkey, it’s back to those old familiar doldrums.

 

Diagnosing the problem has proven tricky. Employing other areas of my life as evidence, it seems the most likely explanation is that I have trouble folding things. An excursion through my unmentionables drawer serves as pretty compelling proof. When it comes to clothes, my folding style is about two steps removed from not folding at all; you could drop a cat in my sock piles and not find it for weeks. If I can’t even master the correct folding of a T-shirt, which wraps around nothing, how am I expected to fold a swatch of paper over the contoured case of a power drill? It’d be easier to engineer my own space craft and go rock collecting in the Sea of Tranquility.

 

Luckily, I’m a decent gift giver. The folks on my “nice” list might scratch their heads at the disturbing lumps they receive, but at the very least I try to put some thought into what’s under the lumps – diamonds, essentially, swaddled in coal. The always-ubiquitous “they” say it’s the thought that counts, and that’s good news, ’cause if they were handing out points for presentation, I’d get a meaningless participation award and a dime-store cigar that tastes like raccoon droppings. That’s what they give to last-place finishers, isn’t it? Sounds about right.

 

No seasonal gig at the North Pole for this renegade elf. Instead, Christmas survival hinges on two glorious words: Gift bags. They’re not perfect. But considering the alternative, I’ll take ’em.

 

Frankly speaking

Ben Franklin never served as president, never took up arms during war, and never held public office outside of the old Pennsylvania Assembly, which was essentially a subsidiary of the British Parliamentary system. Yet he’s on the $100 bill. Not bad for a guy who looked like a dope-smoking sock puppet.

 

I’m reading historian H.W. Brands’ biography of Franklin at the moment, and contained therein is no shortage of reasons why he deserves such prominence in our nation’s collective memory. The dude was pretty boss. He was a printer, writer, statesman, scientist and inventor, and by all accounts, was a blast to hang out with; I can imagine few more pleasurable evenings than playing checkers with ol’ Ben in front of a roaring fire while he regales me with stories about kings and diplomats – and, as he called them, “low women.” “Low women” is 18th Century code for “hookers,” and serves as evidence that the founding fathers could find tactful ways of conversing about almost anyone and anything. I wonder how Franklin would have described a colonoscopy. A “voluntary intrusion of the dark recesses of a gentleman’s nether region,” perhaps. Yet another reason why we need to build a time machine.

 

While reading, though, a thought struck me. Say Franklin had been born not in 1706, but 2006. Would he have been able to garner such widespread acclaim as a thinker and renaissance man? 

 

Methinks not.

 

For one thing, there was the languorous pace of colonial life. Not that people weren’t industrious and hard working, but when a trip from Philadelphia to Boston required a month off from work and a knock-kneed horse named Gimpy, there was plenty of time to explore one’s interests. Heck, if I had four weeks of undisturbed repose, I could write a mystery novel, build a model ship, and still have a couple of days left over to choreograph a musical number for the Ice Capades. Shackled by the modern world’s insistence on immediacy, I’ve hardly got time to buy socks. The ones I’m wearing have more holes than an Oliver Stone plot. (Zing!)

 

It was a also a simpler time, and in simpler times, it was easier for one person to make a difference. That’s not meant to take anything away from Franklin – he was indisputably a genius, well deserving of his lump-faced money mug. But many of his revolutionary achievements were in the arena of physics; with that field now wrung dry of intuitive insights accessible to the layman, further scientific advancements require Jetsons-level technology, the kind of gadgetry only possible via the work of teams of engineers and scientists. The days of lone experimenters shouting “Eureka!” in their basements are largely gone. The last time it happened was probably when Vince Offer invented the ShamWow, and while it’s nice to clean up beer spills without soak-through, it seems farfetched to assume his likeness will be immortalized in any bronze statues. Maybe if he goes on to convince Vladimir Putin to put a damn shirt on. If Offer can rid the world of those jiggling man-bosoms, he can replace FDR on the dime.

 

It’s funny. When you look at some of Franklin’s inventions, it’s almost shocking how even the uninitiated can attest to their overwhelming logic. Take the Franklin stove. Until its conception, fireplaces were relatively wide-open contraptions that blew through wood like a rock star blows through cocaine. Then along came Benny-boy with his big Benny brain and a design that made it more efficient – an enclosed compartment for the wood, and a hollow baffle near the rear that more effectively spread heat throughout a room. It produced more warmth and less smoke, but was notable for another reason: It was arguably the first modern attempt at increasing fuel efficiency. A chord went much further than it did previously. Good news for our New England-dwelling forebears; at that time, their only alternatives for surviving brutal winters were violent squat thrusts and setting themselves on fire. Neither of which are viable options when you’ve got dinner guests.

 

The stove, lumped in with a million other achievements, gained him widespread acclaim. Flash forward 300 years, and it’s difficult to envision that happening; lone inventors typically settle for getting most of their attention from television infomercials. Instead of immortality in the history books, they get three easy installments of $19.99 from third-shift shut-ins and insomniacs with mustard stains on their underwear. 

 

This isn’t to discourage a lone person from fighting against the crowded echo chamber of modern life. The idea that one man or woman can make an impact is central to great policy ideas, innovative works of literature, and the increasingly complicated routines of jugglers on unicycles. But in the area of invention, there are too many people already thronging the stage. The next Franklin stove – that must-have innovation which changes the way we live – will likely be the dominion of big business, or groups of university scientists working to unlock the complex secrets of nature. Franklin’s was a single mind left free to roam by the luxury of time; of all the luxuries we’ve gained in the intervening centuries, that’s one we’ve left behind.

 

Perhaps some visionary soul is still out there who’s got the grit and chutzpa to land their portrait on a bill, a spectral game-changer tucked into peoples’ wallets. They’ll just have to do something extraordinary and without precedent – like finally building that time machine. If that person exists, they’d better hurry up. I’ve heard Franklin was pretty good at checkers, and I wanna see if I can beat him.

 

I heard that

He started off as just a guy. With a cell phone attached to his ear, he gabbed to an unseen person as I was seated in front of my laptop waiting for a meeting to begin. He paced back and forth across the room, carrying on with great importance, as men on cell phones are want to do, his stance and posturing indicative of a high-stakes conversation – arms negotiations with Russia, perhaps, or the imminent signing of a big-ticket lefty to bolster the Red Sox bullpen. The gentlemen even wore a suit, and as we all know, movers and shakers don’t get things done without well-pressed pants and a Windsor knot.

 

We were the only two people in the room, the rest of the meeting’s attendees having yet to arrive. Nevertheless, I paid him little mind. He was engrossed in his phone call, and I was hooking up to the building’s Wi-Fi so I could check email and play dominoes against cotton farmers in Uzbekistan. Yeah, I’m a pretty big deal.

 

It’s not that I actively meant to eavesdrop. He was locked into his own world, I in mine. But sometimes, in these situations, a person says something that draws attention to itself; human nature is to listen.

 

“We’ll beat ’em!” he shouted at one point. “We’ll beat ’em like rented mules!”

 

Rented mules?

 

I was beginning to like this guy.

 

By most standards, it’s rude to listen in on other peoples’ conversations. If Mule Guy wanted to include me in this exchange, he would have pulled up a chair, put his mobil device on speaker phone, and delineated to both of us his theories regarding this mysterious beating. By the time he finished, I’d know where the mules could be acquired, why they deserved such unforgiving treatment, and the best methods for inflicting said punishment. Personally, I’d think the best way to teach a mule a lesson would be to strap him to a wooden kitchen chair, prop his eyes open Clockwork Orange-style, and force him to watch a Pauly Shore marathon while a stereo blasts the selected musical works of Barry Manilow. Cruel and unusual, yes, but at least you don’t have to hit anything. PETA would be proud.

 

Only something’s happened over the past decade or so. With cell phones becoming near-ubiquitous, people seem to care less about potential eavesdroppers overhearing their most private and eyebrow-raising conversations. And now that phones are “smart,” it’s much easier to share with strangers all your best anecdotes about the time you got your chest waxed in Bermuda. The lines have blurred. Nobody’s business is everyone’s business, the world a carnival peep-show.

 

Technology has brought us many wonderful things: The automobile, Double-Stuffed Oreos, edible underwear and the Slinky, to name the most important. Yet clearly it’s a double-edged sword, because I find myself knowing way too many things about people I care way too little about. I make a conscious effort to limit my Facebook friends to people I actually know in real life, because the last thing I need is to log onto my account and see vacation photos from my college roommate’s brother’s former landlord’s daughter-in-law’s second cousin with the Motley Crue tattoo. Oh, Bobby Blubberbooger spent the summer in Amsterdam and contracted syphilis from a tranny named Snake? That’s fantastic! Pardon me while I smash my face repeatedly with a waffle iron.

 

Perhaps I’m overreacting.

 

But those are the kinds of things that happen when our fascination over technological goo-gaws makes us less protective of our privacy. Just a few short years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to hear Mule Guy’s side of the conversation without lurking outside his kitchen window and infiltrating his abode with high-tech surveillance equipment, the kind used by CIA operatives and dashing Tom Cruise movie characters. Now all I have to do is stand within earshot and pretend that I’m really concerned about my cuticles. 

 

There’s a new term that’s cropped up recently called “Facebook stalking.” It sounds like what it is: You go to someone’s Facebook page – an ex-lover, perhaps, or a guy you suspect of bilking your friend out of poker money – and you root through posts and photo albums, travel histories and video game scores. It’s creepy, to be sure, on the level of Peeping Toms and saps who play love songs on stereos outside girlfriend’s apartment windows. All that information, though, wouldn’t be there unless people tossed it up voluntarily. Maybe you’re having a verbal conversation in a public place, à la Mule Guy; maybe you’re going online and sharing photos of the time you went bungee jumping dressed in a ballerina tutu. The fact remains that, despite the encroachments of technology, privacy is still largely a choice.

 

Every generation deviates from the one previous in its morals and attitudes; it’s how a society evolves. But technology has created a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the ages, not so much a line in the sand as a silicon wall. A life lived in the open is a concept incomprehensible to those who came of age amidst turntables and rotary phones. My own generation is unique in that it straddles that line – the Internet grew up along with us, and so while we’re generally comfortable using these gadgets and know how to apply them, we remember a time before hyperconnectivity and social media apoplexy over the nutritional merits of lentil soup. 

 

As a result, we see both sides of the coin. The general consensus is this: Cell phones are great, Facebook is fun, and take as many digital photos as your memory card’ll store. At some point, however, your business gets gratuitous. Pull the reins up, ol’ hoss.

 

Sometimes a person wants to round up the transgressors and beat ’em like rented mules. And hey, I know a guy who’ll help.

 

Swear to me

Wasn’t it shocking the first time you ever heard a teacher swear?

 

I was in middle school, if memory serves. Our geography teacher, a man I’ll call Mr. Mustache, was doing his usual bang-up job of telling us where stuff was. At one point during his lecture, he let an expletive fly that snapped into sharp focus the attention of every last student in the classroom – and instilled in us more than a little fear. It’s kind of scary when a teacher cusses. Probably moreso if you’re the teacher.

 

Now, there’s a reason I call this guy Mr. Mustache. The walrus bristles on his upper lip were so thick and lustrous, so all-encompassing, that had the mighty warriors of the Incan empire laid eyes upon it, they would have fallen to their knees and worshipped him as a god. This is facial hair that would easily have been immortalized in sculptures, carvings, and whatever other medium the Incas could find; they’d have invented one just to capture the glory, the unmitigated awesomeness, of this ridiculously powerful set of face follicles. 

 

Yet an interesting thing happened that day. When he uttered the curse word – a synonym for “poo” – this power ’stache was sucked into his mouth like a great lion retreating to its cave. His dimples deepened; his face reddened. Somehow, while contorting his features thusly, he also managed to clench his jaw, at which point I thought, “Don’t do it! You’ll bite it off! You’ll die of mammoth-mustache asphyxiation!”

 

Mr. Mustache was obviously quite embarrassed. You’re not supposed to mention the “S” word when telling a bunch of 12- and 13-year-olds that Egypt is in northern Africa. To his credit, he played it cool. Once normal color returned to his face, he resumed his lecture, never mentioning or acknowledging this oratorical snafu. The mustache was restored to its former majesty.

 

The rest of us? We were kinda freaked out.

 

When you’re in school, teachers belong in a special subcategory of human. Same genus, different species. In this imagined biological classification, a teacher is a remote, cold-blooded creature with little capacity for mistakes, and possesses roughly the same moral code as a Jedi Knight, albeit the world’s most boring one. In reality, of course, this isn’t true; they’re regular people with regular morals, and rarely in casual conversation do they elicit comatose states by debating the merits of sines versus cosines. Try telling that to a kid, though.  When I was but a wee tot, teachers were this lofty, unreachable thing. The thought of one of them swearing was unfathomable. Easier to imagine the Dalai Lama drop-kicking a baby kitten in the kidneys.

 

Education is just one of those vocations in which you’re expected to project a certain image – in this case, being a role model for young people. Best not to drop the F-bomb around the impressionable set, lest they go home to dinner that evening and ask their parents to pass the motherbleeping peas. 

 

It’s a standard shared by only a handful of professions, and in some instances, foul language could be considered a prerequisite. Imagine if construction workers, firefighters and lobstermen were barred from sprinkling their language with expletives. Without that vent, the pressure would gradually build, until one day – out on the open ocean, or at the scene of a face-melting conflagration – their heads would explode, spewing forth a torrent of pent-up obscenities that’d wilt flowers and melt people’s eyes in their very sockets. Heck, even we journalists occasionally need that outlet. Around mayors and sate reps, sure, we have to be on our best behavior, but at the right time of day, a five-minute excursion into the bowels of the newsroom can expose an unwitting visitor the kind of salty talk usually reserved for gangster epics and rough-and-tumble barrooms. Ass damn. See? We can’t help ourselves. Or maybe that’s just me.

 

Children, for good reason, are discouraged from swearing by parents and authority figures; as a person gets older, the guiding forces in their life gradually slacken their admonishment. The more life experience you’ve got under your belt, the better judgment you generally possess in determining when, and if, it’s acceptable to whip out choice words and phrases. Say, for instance, you’re carrying a gigantic television out to your car, and just before you can get the trunk open, you drop the TV on your foot, shatter your big toe, simultaneously sneeze so hard that blood comes out your nose, and fall backwards onto the hard pavement – slamming your head against the ground while a passing bird poops on your face. In this situation, it is perfectly acceptable to spew forth any expletive you know, and even to make up a few. You don’t go through an ordeal like that and exclaim, “Gosh darnit, son of a biscuit, sugar!” You let ’er rip. You’d burst if you didn’t. That’s what swearing is for.

 

It’s a little less acceptable when you’re standing in front of a bunch of kids and pointing at a map. Which isn’t a rebuke of Mr. Mustache. Nobody’s perfect. It’s just interesting to encounter differing standards tucked into the various folds and cubbyholes of life. Pass a construction site and hear the “B” word in a context not meant for dogs, and it’s not a big deal. Hear the same word from your math teacher and it yanks you out of a light doze more effectively than any rattling snare drum.

 

College was the best. By the time you make it to an institution of higher learning, your professors tend to treat you as, if not fully adult, than at least someone who can handle the occasional reference to blush-worthy anatomical parts. That I remember the Mr. Mustache incident so clearly is testament to how thoroughly the pre-college experience is sanitized for kids’ protection, and how jarring it is when that protection falters. 

 

But would I go back in time just to watch his lip pelt quiver in embarrassment? You’re damn right I would.