Locate Sand, Insert Head - or - Christmas was Stressful.

***Just a quick note — I’ll be back to flippancy and fuckery next week. This one’s a little more morose than you’re probably expecting.***

Here we are! We made it! We ate too much, we drank too much, and we somehow miraculously refrained from telling Great Aunt Constance where she could stick her thoughts about how ‘Hitler had some good ideas, you know’.

Last week I told you about my one and only Christmas tradition. There used to be a bit more to my holidays in general, but as I’ve gotten older they’ve become considerably less holiday-y. At this point I thought I’d be a bit more put out by that fact, but honestly, it’s really turned out to be something of a relief.

By the time I was seven or so, we (my parents and me, only child that I am) dispensed with Christmas decorations pretty much all together. We would designate a houseplant to serve as a present repository and that was sort of that. My mother, a music teacher, would have her annual holiday student recital. We would go to the carol singing party. We would go to my maternal grandparents’ for Christmas Eve and to the home of whichever of my paternal relatives was hosting on Christmas Day. It was all very comfortable, even if my peers thought we were weird for having a ‘Christmas Houseplant’. Things morphed a bit over the years. Eventually, my maternal grandparents were included in the Christmas Day festivities with the paternal side, too, though we still did Christmas Eve most years as well.

Things changed significantly somewhere around 2006, however. My father’s two sisters (he's the oldest of five) had a major falling out, and that was the start of the power washing of the veneer. I was on my first year abroad in England when everything exploded, which meant that I left the country with a cohesive family and came back to a war zone.

The short version is that it’s only gotten worse. Everyone hates everyone, very few people are on speaking terms, and you never know who or when, and I’ve just gotten stuck in the middle of it all. For a while, I tried to ‘take the high road’, to be equally involved with everyone because none of this was my fault, but then, somehow, someone decided that some of it was my fault, and at this point I’ve given up caring.

So, no big family Christmas is definitely one in the blessings column these days.

Eleven years and minus three out of four grandparents after the original incident, Christmas this year was just me, Mom, and Dad, in a house on the Northern California coast. No aunts, no uncles, no one-remaining-grandmother. For all intents and purposes, it could have been any long weekend at any time of the year. Well, apart from the fact that I forced them to sit through How the Grinch Stole Christmas (always Karloff, never Carrey!), The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Desk Set. (It’s a Christmas movie. If you all can claim Die Hard, then I can claim Desk Set!) But that was about as festive as it got.

Now, I know this is going to sound ungrateful because there are so many people who are alone or lonely this time of year, but I’d much rather have just stayed home. I have an interesting relationship with my parents — almost as interesting as the relationship they have with each other. The word ‘tolerate’ is the best descriptor. We tolerate each other. Sometimes barely. You can imagine how much moral fortitude is required to tolerate each other for four days with a minimum of external stimulation.

If I’m honest, I’m getting tired of tolerating. It’s exhausting.

“So why don’t you talk to your parents? To the rest of your family? Tell them how you feel?”

Simple. We’re not that kind of family. I’d have thought that was obvious, considering the massive clusterfuck that is presently my father’s side thereof.

No, at this point, we’re just going through the motions because it’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to be joyful and thankful and hopeful and bursting at the seams with love and good cheer - so what do you do when you can’t muster up any of those things? You go along anyway and you put on your public face and you make the best of what you’ve got. You try to keep the conversation light, you try to keep your parents from chewing each other to pieces, and when you fail at those things, you just get out for a while — in my case this year, taking solitary walks on the beach and very long naps.

You do what you’re supposed to do, because you’re supposed to do it.

You put up with things as best you can, until you can get away.

And you feel thoroughly empty inside.

The Elf on the Shelf — KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

The other day, as is now tradition, I was subjected to my boss’ annual rant about The Elf on the Shelf.

For the uninitiated, allow me to explain. The Elf on the Shelf is a yuletide gimmick used by parents who can’t be bothered to keep their children in line through traditional methods and have to rely on “the magic of Christmas” to keep their rugrats from going feral in the throes of the “gimme gimme gimme” season. (Okay, okay, that’s a bit draconian. But not entirely inaccurate…)

The elf lore states that when you adopt an elf (who comes in an eminently giftable set with his or her own storybook and adoption papers), that elf becomes your family’s elf every Christmastime. He or she shows up after Thanksgiving/around the first of December and lives with your family, watching the children and reporting their behavior back to Santa each night until Christmas Eve, when he or she returns to the North Pole until next year.

How do you know he goes back to the North Pole every night?

Because every morning, he’s somewhere different in the house.

Because Mom and Dad have to remember to move him into some new and interesting pose every morning.

For an entire month.

I take issue with this atrocity in two major ways, the first of which is the fact that parents can be unwittingly committed to this charade by (possibly) well-intentioned relatives or friends. My boss has two little girls, now six and two-and-a-half. Three years ago, her mother in law gifted them the dreaded Christmas abomination, and, of course, the then-four-year-old saw it and knew about it and therefore Mom and Dad were shit out of luck. Now they HAD to do it, or risk the wrath of Mom-in-law AND the small human.

For parents who don’t decide to participate of their own volition, this ridiculous pretense is simply an added chore during what is, for most people, an already very busy time of year. The rules state that NO ONE can touch the elf or he loses his magic, which means that Mom and Dad have to be awfully sneaky when they change his location every day. And God forbid they should forget! Small humans can be keen little observers, and I’ve heard about plenty of fits of brokenhearted wailing at the sight of Mr. Elf in the same place two days in a row because that meant “He didn’t got back to the North Pole and now Santa won’t know how good I was and I won’t be on the Nice List!”

You can only blame inclement weather so many times for Mr. Elf’s non-movement.

And if he’s not somewhere different EVERY TIME, EVERY YEAR? Oy…

The thing is, if you make a gift of this farcical toy, you get to fuck off elsewhere and leave the recipients to deal with it. You unthinking bastards.

Now, the second reason I take exception to The Elf on the Shelf is the concept at its core. When you plug it into Google search, you get a little thing at the side of the screen which shows things “People Also Search For:” and one of those things is George Orwell’s 1984, a novel set in a futuristic dystopian society with omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation.

That’s right, kids, Santa is Big Brother. “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake.” Santa’s already a fuckin’ creeper, and now we’re training subsequent generations to toe the line for future despots when the revolution comes and we’re all turned into mindless, government-worshipping drones. (Again, draconian, but, I mean, come ON.)

Your children aren’t behaving because they know that it’s the right thing to do. They’re behaving because the threat of a fat man in a red suit not bringing them things because they got tattled on by a plastic-and-fabric effigy of a mythical humanoid creature is more motivating than their parent’s approval of their life choices.

There’s something wrong with this picture.

BUT, there’s a way out!

So, you’ve ended up with one of these elves, and you don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with it. Here are some creative (and incredibly, incredibly messed up) Get Out of Jail Free cards!

Kill it! Kill it with fire!

The kiddos come out in the morning, bright-eyed and excited to see where Mr. Elf has ended up today! The fireplace in the living room is roaring, and there’s Mr. Elf clinging for dear life to the handle on the damper. His elf uniform is happily toasting, his plastic face melting away. “Oh, dear, looks like he came back from the North Pole just as Daddy started the fire this morning! What? We didn’t know he came down the chimney like Santa! Now stop sobbing and eat your cereal.”

Elf Leprosy

Play the game for a week or so, and make sure that one of the places Mr. Elf ends up is very, very wet. Then don’t dry him out properly, and expose him to some sort of mold. One morning, the little angels will follow a trail of elf bits down the hall to the remains of Mr. Elf’s mangled corpse. “This is what happens when you don’t take baths! Your parts fall off! We’re going to have to send him to a special place for people like him where he can lose his remaining limbs in peace and not infect anyone else. Now, go to school. Mommy has to bleach EVERYTHING so we don’t all DIE.”

And finally,

The Dangers of the Outdoors

“Where’s the elf? Where’s the elf?!” they cry. “I don’t know, darlin’s. I’m sure he’ll turn up.” And then he does. On the front lawn. Impaled on a strategically placed and totally-not-on-purpose sharpened stick stuck into the ground. “Uh-oh. Looks like when he was trying to come back down the chimney from his trip to the North Pole he slid and fell and ended up as an elf-kabob! Well, what have we learned from this, kids? Don’t play on the roof!”

You’re welcome.

Schadenfreude!

Note: This post was originally written on November 21st, 2017.

Schadenfreude — German for ‘happiness at the misfortune of others’. Here, have some examples.

Even before I learned that there was a word for it, I knew the feeling. Let’s be honest, we all do. It’s part of human nature. We’re relieved when something not-so-nice happens to someone who is not us. Obviously there’s a point beyond which you’re actually a monster if you’re elated when something gawdawful happens to another person or group of people, but there’s a lovely big playground of middleness from which you can derive a whole lot of laughter.

A lot of it is on television.

With people doing it on purpose.

I mean, come on. Reality TV is a breeding ground for schadenfreude, and we can’t seem to get away from it. There’s an audience. There’s an audience because there is something in all of us that, perversely, likes to see the other guy fail.

You might be sitting there thinking “No, actually, I don’t get any sort of elation from other people’s failings,” and maybe you don’t, so I guess you’re just a better person all around. Or you’re lying because you feel bad about the buzz you get when someone slips on the pavement and nearly falls but rights themselves at the last minute and tries to play it off like nothing happened but eeeeeeverybody knows it did.

The chances of that person feeling bad for not feeling bad about the same thing happening to you are slim to none, my friend. I don’t care how nice you are on a regular basis, if you don’t at least smirk when the guy feeding the ducks gets chased by an overly-amorous swan, you need to reevaluate your life choices.

I could keep wittering on about all of this, but I’d rather tell you a funny.

My commute to and from work every day is just full of douche-canoes. Usually in very expensive vehicles. (Seriously. I got passed by a McLaren once. Teslas are as common as pigeons. And Porches? Oh, puh-LEEZ, they’re practically passé!) As you can imagine, I am liable to witness an egregious amount of fuckery on my commute as a result. Clearly, these people are far more important than the rest of us, and we should be falling all over ourselves with gratitude that they allow us to partake of their personal asphalt pathways to and from their Very Important Places. We should all pull right over when their two-seater Jaguar comes into view, and then wait an appropriate five minutes to get back on the road once they’ve gone, lest we come just a touch too close to them for their liking. We should always allow them to cut into our lanes at the very last moment because they’re too important to keep track of the fact that they’re in an exit-only lane, and it isn’t the one they want. I mean, usually their butlers would take care of that for them, but occasionally even Jeeves needs a day off, don’t you know.

And sometimes, they just run up your ass and try to run you off the road, even though you’re already going ten miles per hour over the speed limit in the slow lane. ::tears out hair, screams, and throws things::

Generally, all of this is just cause for plenty of swearing on my part.

This morning, however, the law was on the side of the mild-mannered motorists.

I was toodling down the freeway in my usual manner, and the traffic started to slow dramatically (which is very normal along this stretch of road because Californians don’t know how to deal with curves in the road, but that’s a story for another time) and, oh look, here comes Mr. Lexus barreling down behind me.

Off he slips into the new toll lane to get around things.

Oh, look, there’s the FastTrack reader!

::SWERVE:: Mr. Lexus is back with the rest of us.

This repeats once more while I can still see the Lexus. I had a lovely shout at him, just for my own health and recreation.

Then comes Chippie, casual as you like, trawling the toll lane. (California Highway Patrol = CHP = Chippie. You learned a thing!) I cheered Chippie on, knowing full well he could see Mr. Lexus from his patrol truck.

After that, my lane slowed again, and they left my line of sight. Obviously I hoped I’d see them off to the side at some point later, but figured I probably wouldn’t.

But I was wrong!

Just after the exit before mine, there was Chippie and Mr. Lexus off to the side. I may or may not have done as much of a happy dance as is possible when driving a car.

Call me a flawed human being if you like, but the whole thing just made my day.