Getting My Presents Wrapped Up

Every year, the Christmas season offers me a distinct reminder of what I miss most about living at home: Having someone else purchase the gifts I plan on handing out.

The Beast has long believed that Jake and I should give each other gifts, but, in our earliest years, she was pragmatic enough to understand that if the task of picking, purchasing and personalizing this gift were left to us, it would never (ever) get done.

Thus, every year, mid-way through December, The Beast would discreetly pull us aside, one at a time, and show us the gift we would be giving.

We would have no idea where it came from, how much it cost, or if had ever been requested.

But then came the catch.

With this much of the process already completed, we, understandably, reacted poorly when asked to do the wrapping. The situation was finally resolved when we, reluctantly, agreed to apply the correct names to the “to” and “from” areas of the adhesive gift tag.

When the time came to give gifts to relatives, The Beast considered her options and decided it was much easier to simply choose and buy another gift, rather than subject herself to the sounds Jake and I would make when asked what we’d like to give to some random relative.

In our defense, our young minds were abuzz with original gift ideas, but The Beast would have none of it.

“What should we give Uncle Carl? I would ask, with all the insight a seven-year-old could muster. “How about a big pile of crap? That would suit him perfectly.”

This comment would cause Hal to burst out laughing (before a quick, cold stare from The Beast silence him), but nothing ever happened.

Jake might helpfully chime in with the belief that our least favorite cousin (if you’re reading this, you know who you are) should be given a gift certificate to a bottomless pit of snakes.

In recent years (ever since the Condom Piñata Incident, at least) the cousins on The Beast’s side of the family have been hosting an annual “Cousins Night,” which precedes the larger family gathering the next day.

It is, as you might imagine, less interesting than the glowing nuance of my words suggests.

The most nefarious part of this event, however, is that the organizers administer Secret Santa-like gift assignments several weeks beforehand. Participation, I am annually informed, is not optional.

[It’s worth noting that a handful of these cousins have long since renounced religion and America, and become devout Communists. As a result, this gift exchange is less of a Secret Santa and more of a Mysterious Marx or Surreptitious Stalin.]

Falling back on life experience, I have, in past years, bought exactly zero of the gifts I have been ordered to give.

I have revisited the familiar ritual of my youth. Although it once took place in our living room, and it now occurs over the phone, the main points and end results remain the same:

The Beast: Do you know you were assigned your cousin Kevin for Surreptitious Stalin?

Me: Yes, I heard that, but I’m not doing it this year.

TB: Yes, you are!

M: Nope.

TB: Well, I found out he wants a [inane gift], can you just go get it?

M: I refuse.

TB: Fine – if you get it, I’ll pay you back.

M: I reaffirm my refusal.

TB: OK, you little snot, I’ll buy it if you just wrap it when you get here.

M: Out of the question.

TB: Will you at least sign the gift tag?

M: Do I have to hand him the gift at the party?

TB: No.

M: Agreed. I’ll see you on the 21st.

Aside from Christmas with the proletariat on The Beat’s side, I am very excited for these upcoming holidays.

From what I hear, The Beast has already wrapped some things Jake is really going to thank me for.

Parking

In preparation for my trip home this Christmas, The Beast has already drafted a spectacularly long list of proposed activities.

Many of these things on this list are trips to see assorted family members—but a handful of them take place in downtown Seattle.

For some, an evening in the Emerald City sounds like a lot of fun, but to me it just sounds like a lot of walking.

To fully grasp this sentiment, it helps to understand one of Hal’s most passionately held beliefs.

“Those big parking garages,” he has often explained, “are monuments to the weakness and laziness of mere men.”

This belief was extended, of course, to pay-by-the-hour parking lots or any designated park-and-ride area. Putting coins in a street-side meter was even farther outside the realm of possibility.

When it came to finding a temporary place to rest our car, Hal saw a grand game afoot—and he was a player, not the played.

Hal’s reasoning, by his estimation, was simple: He had paid for the car, his taxes had paid for the roads, and he had paid (after finding a steep discount) for whichever event he was attending – no force on earth, hell or hereafter was going to get him to pay for parking once he got there.

This is where all the walking came in.

Since the areas surrounding a major attraction recognize that an influx of people will need a place to stow their automobile, and will be willing to pay for said luxury, it makes sense that every available space will have a pricetag attached to it.

In concentric circles, the prices become much cheaper the farther away they are from the attraction. Eventually those prices drop to zero.

Hal patrolled those outer valences with the intensity and veracity of an ancient predator.

On countless occasions, our trip to the city for Mariners games, ferry rides, festivals and concerts was preceded by an elaborately—comically, even—long walk from the parking spot Hal had so proudly claimed as his own.

Whereas Safeco Field might have been our destination, Hal could not have been more pleased with the spot he’d found on the southern fringes of Portland.

Jake and I, out of a sense of obligation, provided the requisite amount of complaining, but this availed us nothing. Hal, instead, would speak at great length about how his parking spot was free, and that parking several miles closer wouldn’t make any difference.

Over the last 54 years, Hal has avoided paying 65 cents for parking on dozens of occasions. If all goes well, by his 70th birthday he will have saved nearly $40.

The Hawken Family Newsletter -- It's Too Late to Fix it

I received a gleeful call from The Beast last week.

After weeks of careful planning her favorite project, she was proud to report that the Hawken family newsletter, is finished.

There's a wide variety of things Jake and I dislike about this specific Christmas tradition, but the most unlikable element--by far--is our new found responsiblity of adding content to it.

After drafting my portion of last year’s shamelessly self-congratulating newsletter, I felt I had succinctly and thoroughly summarized the New York experience.

I assumed that, with this task completed, I could, in future editions, focus on more prosaic matters like recently broken bones or the refurnishing of my apartment’s guest bedroom -- the kind of things that get my mother so excited that her eyes roll back into her head.

But NYC, for all its voluminous shortcomings, is a place that does not lend itself to pedestrian fare.

Adding to the excitement of the city is my own inherited narcissism, which, when combined with a major metropolis, finds notably exciting things around every corner.

This trait is obviously the result of a specific gene passed on by my mother which became dominant over my fathers gene which selected for unintentional detached indifference.

None of this really matters now, but I think Gregor Mendel would be happy to know it’s all sorted out.

Thanksgiving Recap

Now that I've finally finished digesting Thanksgiving dinner, I've had a chance to reflect on how much different it is to celebrate this holiday far away from the people I shared it with as a child.

The primary difference is the vacant spot at the table which, throughout my young life, would be occupied by The Beast and her ceaseless demands that I conform to her Puritanical social norms by not rubbing mashed potatoes in Jake's face, or telling my younger cousins that the dark meat came from puppies.

These constant demands were occasionally outsourced to Hal. I believe Hal would have played a much larger role in limiting the number of obscene references I made about the cranberry sauce, but he was always (and let me emphasize, always) arguing in favor of democracy and capitalism with my neo-communist aunts and cousins.

During the past several Thansgivings spent on the east coast, there have been no such restraints on my behavior, although my wife does not see the humor (nor the history) in my attempts to rub finely ground tubers in the face of the smallest person at the table.

Also missing from this year's festivies was the presence of remarkably intoxicated relatives.

I'm not sure how this tradition began, but, year after year, I have watched with no small degree of enthusiasm as my uncles (and, as we all got older, most of my cousins) began to stagger across the relatively short expanse between the couch and the baked goods strewn about the kitchen.

Once upon a time I could summarize, quite affectionately, this display of alcohol enthusiasm by saying, "Well, it was a fun get together, My Two Drunk Uncles (or MTDU, for short) were in top form again this year."

But now that everyone is older, the amusement goes far beyond MTDU and includes several cousins, spouses of cousins, boyfriends of cousins and, if anyone owned animals, there'd probably be a small dog that couldn't walk straight.

Also missing from this year's celebration (and by "missing," I mean missing from everyone but me) was a wholesale gorging of food that would have made a Roman emperor nauseus.

There are some people that eat too much when they are stressed, or maybe because they are terribly depressed, but not us. At the outset of each holiday, my family consumes an unspeakably ridiculous amount of food for no apparent reason at all. My best guess is that we feel that by doing this we somehow compensate for the starving Pilgrims of yore.

When all has been said and done, how successful and/or pleasant has a Thanksgiving celebration really been? That question can be answered by determing if a question like this is possible on Friday:

Person: How was your Thanksgiving?

Me: Oh man, I ate so much, I thought I was going to die. Like, I
seriously felt like my stomach was going to rupture and I was going to fall into
neurogenic shock.

Person: Wow that sounds awf...

Me: Awesome. So, so awesome.

Family Dynamics

Note: As with anything brilliant or hilarious, it helps to know some of the basic grammatical rules, possess a familiarity with the classics, and understand why we're doing it too.

Thanksgiving, Minus The Shouting and Appetizers

Thanksgiving festivities are usually characterized by consumption of mass quantities among all those who celebrate it. For my whole life, our family - in conjunction with The Beast's side of the family - has taken this to astronomical proportions.

From the second we enter the door till the second we shamble out to our cars, there is non-stop food. Indeed, it's like a Roman Food Orgy except instead of a vomitorium, there's just a second room full of food. Vomiting is actually frowned on at one of these gatherings.

It is expected that intense training regimen, such as that done by Professional Eating "athletes," is adhered to in preparation for the celebration. In fact, vomiting at my family's Thanksgiving festivities is grounds for discharge from the family. It's a tough rule, but one we hold to strictly.

I remember back in 1987, our cousin Reggie was released from the family, and escorted out of the house, sans clothing, to fend for himself in the woods surrounding Port Orchard, Washington.

Poor Reggie.

Also, a staple of our extended family culture is the escalation of decibel levels throughout the night. I actually had no idea that people spoke using "indoor voices" at the dinner table until just a few days ago as I went with my roommate to his parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner.

Having been accustomed to such focused and dedicated gluttony and such uncompromising loudness for my whole life, I was first very surprised to see that one of the children in attendance didn't touch her food at all. In my family, this sort of blasphemy would have brought upon of us the fate suffered by Reggie back in '87. I was surprised to see that the child was not even scolded much less exiled into the night!

Next, I was learned quickly that customs were different when everybody grew alarmed as I shouted a filthy joke down the table (it being an obvious dysphemism for "passing the gravy," that even a toddler in my family could have picked up on).

Assuming them to merely be pacing themselves, I was astonished to discover that the proceedings not only refrained from getting louder, but actually grew quieter as the night wore on. In fact, by the end of the night, not a single person in the room was shouting!

With my impending nuptials, I begin to wonder if such displays of weakness - both in the stomach and in the vocal cords - are inherent in my fiancée's family tradition. I'm beginning to fear that this may very well be the case.

She will be accompanying me to our Christmas festivities this year, and I'm afraid she may not be prepared for our strict code of conduct.

But on the bright side, I think Reggie will enjoy the company.

Kiss Goodbye

Note: As with anything brilliant or hilarious, it helps to know some of the basic grammatical rules, possess a familiarity with the classics, and understand why we're doing it too.

Higher Temps?

Note: As with anything brilliant or hilarious, it helps to know some of the basic grammatical rules, possess a familiarity with the classics, and understand why we're doing it too.

I Can Has Hawkens?

One of the Intrawebs many benefits is the new mediums of communication it provides. In some cases, it provides not only a new way to deliver that communication, but an entirely new way to present and project critical information.

Alongside Guttenberg and Ferdinand de Saussure, is the keen language of the LOLcats.

Like any proper vernacular, this new mode of communication has its own grammatical rules dictating proper style and usage, detailed treatises on its history, and, of course, a basic grasp of the classics is exceptionally helpful.

Perhaps the LOLcats creator says it best: "The grammar is consistently awful, as if the cat was trying to speak English but just couldn’t get the conjugation right."

In an expression of the sincerest form of flattery, and with a desire to present our family via the most advanced forms of communication possible, we presnt our newest feature: I Can Has Hawkens?

The Gift of Gifts Which are Not for Me

Ever since I got engaged, The Beast has been gathering baby supplies.

During ensuing 4+ years she has never anxiously asked if and when she'll get her first grandchild, but has instead patiently amassed untold quantities of childrens books, toys and clothing.

It is, by any reckoning, moderately creepy.

I suppose in many ways I am lucky -- most women her age are a source of constant questions regarding when the next generation will begin and what awful family forenames the offspring will bear. The Beast does not trouble herself with such inquiries. She instead ravages the infant and toddler sections of Gap, Sears and Target.

I have seen only a fraction of the things already purchased, and it already wildly outdistances any purchases ever made for me.

Whereas I was expected to happily attend school with imitation Converse (minus the laces) or imitation Roo Shoes (minus the velcro), my future children with be lavishly showered (minus the water) with a wide variety of one-piece velour tracksuits and blue jeans with snaps up the sides.

Watching all of these gifts get dispensed is going to be like watching the disarming of Germany. I can only hope that she has accidentally put some stuff for me in these boxes.

If memory serves, I only received 145 of the possible 147 Transformer action figures. There's still time to complete the set.