From the Archives - Holiday Newsletter About HEAD LICE! GROSS!

Introduction

I have a tradition of mailing out a highly unconventional holiday newsletter.  The original setup was to figure out the most humiliating thing I’d done all year and describe it in excruciating detail.  Some years I satirized the newsletter form itself, by making myself or my family out to be egomaniacal, or claiming to be really disappointed in my kids.  After the family editorial panel (i.e., my wife) censored a couple of editions (such as this one), I toned things down a bit.

Here’s the edition from 2011, which I didn’t originally post to this blog for fear of embarrassing my family.  However, I have decided to post it now, and you are free to read it if you’ll promise me one thing:  whether or not you get to the end, please scroll down and read the epilogue, added today.  (Obviously I have no way to hold you to this promise.  You’re on the honor system.)

From the Archives – December 2011 Holiday Newsletter

Season’s Greetings!

I’ve been doing these newsletters for awhile now and I know the drill:  a quick recap of the year, some tidbits about how the kids are progressing, perhaps a wistful observation about the treadmill of time, etc.  But this year I’m struggling, as I’ve become fixated on a specific topic and cannot focus on anything else.  So I better just get that topic out of the way to free up my brain for the more standard tidings.

The topic is head lice.  I’m quite certain that for the rest of my life, whenever I look back at 2011 I’ll think, “Oh, yeah, the year we all got infested.”  Oh, go ahead and snicker.  I always used to, when I’d hear about some kid failing his lice spot-check at school.  Actually, I’d snicker but also wince, acknowledging (but not really believing) that my kid could be next.  Why do we snicker?  Probably out of contempt.  Everybody knows that having lice means you’re filthy.  Not just filthy, but a filthy outsider.  Who can consider the word “lice” without immediately thinking of all those immigrants being quarantined at Staten Island after failing their lice checks?  (As it turns out, it’s an unfair stereotype.  Lice actually prefer a nice clean scalp to a dirty, oily one.  I  know, I know:  sounds exactly like what a louse-infested troll would say.)

Fortunately, my kids didn’t fail a spot-check at school.  Erin discovered the lice herself.  Of course that doesn’t make the infestation any less disgusting, but at least we were spared some disgrace.  (When your scalp is teeming with parasites you get pretty good at looking at the bright side.)  I don’t know how Erin happened to spot the lice, though once she pointed them out I couldn’t not see them.  The eggs had amassed into something like a cobweb woven into our child’s scalp.  Erin extracted a full-grown louse, teasing it with a toothpick until its bloodlust led it to climb on, perhaps en route to Erin’s own locks.  She flung the louse into the sink and the little bastard was so engorged with our daughter’s blood that it exploded on impact, the blood gradually oozing toward the drain, like a Sam Peckinpah vignette in miniature.

I rapidly began a cycle of grief, skipping right past denial (I mean, how could I deny this?) and going directly to anger.  I vowed to exterminate these lice with extreme prejudice.  I told Erin, “If the lice bring knives, we’re bringing guns.  If they bring guns, we’re bringing napalm.  It is on.”  Actually I probably said something less macho.  Likely I was silent for a spell as the heebie-jeebies hit me full on.  Once you’ve seen lice in the hair of your beloved offspring—the same offspring you snuggle with on a regular basis—you cannot help but feel the awful tickly sensation of hundreds of lice in your own hair.  You begin scratching your head like a maniac.  Your body goes through series of shudders from the head down.

I was serious about the no-holds-barred warfare, though.  The trouble is, a parent can’t just decide things unilaterally.  I had to convince Erin to bring out the big guns, which was challenging because she won’t even take Advil for a headache.  We discussed the matter at length and researched all manner of home remedies and commercial anti-lice products.  Finally it came down to a binary choice:  either we use RID, an expensive but market-leading anti-lice shampoo, or nothing.

In the event, Erin deftly slipped between the horns of the dilemma by buying RID but not using it.  Her rationale, based on the fine print she read on the box, was that some strains of lice are impervious to RID, and she didn’t want to risk irritating our kids’ scalps if the shampoo wasn’t even a sure thing.  I hit upon a strategy of trying it out on myself to see if it’s hard on the scalp, but then I read the even finer print and discovered that you shouldn’t use it if you’re allergic to ragweed, which I just so happen to be.  Erin did use the chintzy plastic lice comb that it came with, so at least we couldn’t return the RID.

Lice infestation is hard on a marriage.  It ended up falling to Erin to comb out the kids’ hair looking for nits (eggs or leftover egg casings), nymphs (immature lice—isn’t this disgusting?), and adult lice.  She decided she had to be the one to do it because I was obviously useless at it, being unable to find anything on her head.  Since I’m normally pretty good at detail work, she took my incompetence to be a sign of not trying, and, by extension, of not caring.  Of course, she couldn’t find anything on my head either, but she figured that was because I have too little hair left for a louse to bother with.

Since she couldn’t do her own lice check, Erin found a head lice spa to go to.  It took me by surprise that such a business could exist, but of course I should have known.  Off Erin went to this insanely expensive place where they gave her green tea, played New Age music, said soothing things, and petted her head a lot.  They offer no guarantee of any kind that their techniques are effective.  (If this had been a business catering to guys it’d be like smogging your car, where there’s a money-back guarantee.)  About the only good thing I can say about the spa is that the lousseuse told Erin, “You owe your husband an apology.  I can’t find anything either.”  She finally ended up finding one little speck that could have been a nit.  Of course, it could have been a fleck of sawdust, the broken-off tip of an eyelash, or something the lousseuse herself planted there.  She sent Erin home with a gorgeous stainless steel designer lice comb.

Thus began a nightly ritual of Erin getting the kids’ hair wet and running the lice comb through their scalps, squinting at the varicolored specks that would be dislodged, and cursing the whole affair.   I cannot fathom how the term “nitpicking” came to mean “showing too much concern with insignificant details” because ridding our scalps of nits now seemed all-important. We took other measures too.  For example, I put Lindsay’s teddy bear, in a gallon-size Ziploc, in the freezer overnight.  Whether due to the cold or because I forgot to leave an air hole, when I retrieved the bear in the morning it was dead.  Please don’t tell Lindsay.  I also froze my helmet pads, and we did outrageous, climate-changing amounts of laundry.  Erin even decided, in a particularly frantic moment, to give Alexa a short haircut.  Alexa was fairly stoic about this, but poor Lindsay was heartbroken about the loss of her heroic big sister’s glorious long locks.  (I felt sheepish witnessing this show of sympathy.  When I was a kid, I always took great pleasure in my brothers’ misfortunes.)

Perhaps our most disturbing treatment was slathering our heads in über-expensive lotion and then wrapping them in plastic shower caps, which we’d seal up tight like gaskets, before bed.  All night, every time your head would move, there’d be this crackling, ripping sound like a martial arts guy makes.  The idea is to suffocate the adult lice, terrify the nymphs, and poach the eggs.  Or something like that; I was never that clear on what louse phase this treatment targeted.  All I know is that you have to destroy the lice in all their life stages or the cycle will never end.

If you ever find yourself with a family-wide lice infestation, don’t expect any sympathy from friends ... mine just seemed completely grossed out.  A colleague instant-messaged me one morning and said, “How’s the treatment going?”  I wrote back, “Lousy.”  I thought I’d at least get an LOL out of that, but nothing.  No sense of humor on this sordid topic.

We’d discovered the lice in February, and over the next four months we went through everything from despondent denial (“The lice must be gone by now”), to paralysis (“I know the kids have lice but I’m too tired to deal with it”), to fear (“Could this lotion be hard on the kids’ skin?”), to fury (see above), and then to resignation:  “We won’t be rid of the lice until summer because everybody at the school must have it.”

So what finally worked?  Well, I’d like to edify you with the inspiring tale of how we finally won the War On Lice, but the fact is, we never did prevail.  In the end, the lice just left us.  It was like we suddenly weren’t good enough for them anymore.  Of course we were relieved, but I had to work through some abandonment issues.  Plus, we still can’t believe they’re really gone:  every itch becomes a tickle that spawns paranoia, and just last night Erin was combing Lindsay’s hair after a bath and suddenly said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.  That better not be lice.”

Well, I see I’m out of room.  I had meant to write more, and on some cheerier topics, but that’s how it goes.  All of us Alberts wish you a wonderful, parasite-free holiday!

Epilogue

Well, the lice did come back—in full force.  In despair, we hired a lice removal specialist who made house calls.  If you think this sounds expensive, you’re exactly right.  But we (i.e., Erin) just didn’t have the energy to do the combing anymore, and were sick of failing at it.  Well, the expert went at somebody’s head for about five minutes and announced, “There’s no lice here.”  Erin, disbelieving, located some lice on the head in question and pointed it out.  “That’s not lice, that’s dandruff,” the expert said.  She brought out some samples of actual lice, in little Ziploc bags, and showed us.  Sure enough, Erin hadn’t been seeing anything like that on anyone’s head.  Thus was solved the mystery of how we were never able to get rid of the lice—they simply never existed (other than the single blood-gorged louse we’d found early on).

So did I mention this in the next year’s holiday newsletter, or mail around an addendum?  Nope.  I guess all our friends and family believe, to this day, that we’re a bunch of filthy outsiders spreading this hideous plague across our community.  Oh well.

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From the Archives - Descent Into Chaos: My 2005 Holiday Newsletter

Introduction

Every year I write a Holiday Newsletter and send it with my holiday cards.  As newsletters go, mine isn’t very useful; it doesn’t, for example, describe the highlights of the year.  In fact, I usually focus on a single low point of my year, just to counter-balance all the highlights you’ll read about in other people’s newsletters.  Or it’s simply random—the “secret Santa” of holiday newsletters, you might say.

In 2005, I had a hard time thinking clearly enough to write anything.  My kids were four and two and I wasn’t always getting much sleep.  So I decided to embrace randomness as not only the style but the substance of my Holiday Newsletter.  Since this year’s newsletter was inappropriate for a wide audience, I’m posting the 2005 edition from my archives.  Enjoy please enjoy.

Holiday Newsletter - December 17, 2005

I’d hoped to elegantly summarize this past year into a coherent, flowing essay.  But I just don’t think I’m going to get there.  In fact, I think I’ll always remember 2005 as the year I gave up on structure altogether.  I guess this was inevitable, given the whirlwind of family life, especially the inexplicable behavior of children and their sudden tantrums. 

For example, Alexa broke down crying during an argument about whether “Mulamimoto” (the name of her imaginary cat) begins with an “M” or an “R.”  She’d asked me how it was spelled and then refused to accept my answer. 

Pre-verbal Lindsay, meanwhile, will fixate on some food item, cry because it’s not presented quickly enough, stop crying when she gets it, and then start bawling all over again.  Why?  Too hot?  Too cold?  Too much?  Not enough?  When this kind of scenario occupies most of your waking moments, it gets to be too much.  So I finally gave in and accepted that my life had become jumbled and  disordered and there was nothing to be done about it. 

Once I acknowledged the chaos of my life and stopped trying to maintain order, I began to find unpredictability addictive.  I started listening to MP3 music on “shuffle” mode, which has caused some shocking segues.  I’ve decided to bring that randomness to my newsletter and write down whatever ideas come to mind, in no particular order.

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A magazine called “Real Simple” appeared in my bathroom.  It’s an easy read.  It really is simple.  There’s a recipe in there called “cupcakes with ice cream frosting” that has only two ingredients.  One is “cupcakes.”  I’m not kidding!  Anyway, there’s a column in “Real Simple” where readers write in with their time-saving tips.  I’m going to send them this one:  stop worrying about cleaning out the car.  The next time you forget the diaper bag, you’ll be glad you can get by with what’s strewn on the floor.  We keep a bag of clothes in the back that we intend to donate to the Salvation Army.  When we’re really behind on laundry, it’s nice to be able to dip back into that bag to dress the kids.

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Here’s a nice segue:  “Puff the Magic Dragon” right into Beastie Boys’ “Time to Get Ill.”  (Speaking of music, I got stuck in a mall recently and have decided that “Winter Wonderland” should be classified as a munition.  It must have been developed to demoralize the enemy.)

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I had a rough night recently.  At around two in the morning, my wife Erin shook me awake.  There was an incredible racket:  it sounded electronic, and yet human.  A ringing/screaming kind of sound.  Erin handed me a white plastic object and said, “Make it talk.”  Or maybe she said, “Make it stop.”  Or maybe something else entirely.  I took the object in my hand and stared at it.  It was making at least part of the noise.  Then it hit me:  this thing is a phone!  This realization introduced a new problem:  how to make it talk, or make it stop.  Then I remembered:  the talk button.  I found it and pressed it.  Some of the noise subsided.  Now I realized there had been two noises:  a ringing phone, and a crying baby.  But what was Lindsay doing in our bed?  (Only later did I learn that she’d had a nightmare about a “scary monkey” and demanded to sleep with Erin and me.)  Now I was more confused than ever.  I stared at the phone.  Why had it rung?  It dawned on me that somebody must have called, and whoever that was must be on the line and waiting for me to speak.  I put the phone to my ear and said:  “Hello.”

There was a long pause, and then the person on the phone spoke, very quietly, a babbled, murky word, as though spoken across a great distance, and muffled by cotton, or a mouthful of mashed potatoes:  “Brandon.”

I have a colleague named Brandon, but this didn’t sound like him.  It sounded like somebody on his deathbed speaking his last word.  I considered this for a moment before saying, “Brandon?”

Again, the voice gurgled:  “Brandon.”

Totally confused, I decided to go with what I knew to be true.  “This isn’t Brandon,” I said.  “This is Dana.”

A long pause.  Over the screech of Lindsay’s crying, I was finally able to make out that the caller was someone from work trying to solve a problem and looking for Brandon.  He had to settle for me.

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Another time-saving tip for “Real Simple”:  forget the Diaper Genie.  Instead, when you change your baby, just drop the soiled diaper anywhere.  Then, whenever you think to do it, kick a few diapers toward the bathroom trash can.  At some point, gather them from the bathroom floor and throw them out all at once.  This way, you won’t have to wash your hands as often.

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I guess I shouldn’t admit this, but I haven’t seen Lindsay’s glasses in weeks.  I’m not sure anybody else has even realized they’re missing.  I fear we’re not running a very tight ship here.

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Another nice segue:  from Chopin’s Nocturne for Piano in G minor, Op. 15/3, right into “Fell On Black Days” by Soundgarden.

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I think there was a distinct moment when I gave up on structure and accepted senselessness.  It was when buying hair gel.  I hadn’t been getting to the barber as often as I should, so I’d been experimenting with increasingly robust hair gels.  I started with Suave “Mega Hold,” which is rated as an “8” on the hold scale.  (The units aren’t specified.)  On my next trip to the store Mega Hold was gone, but in its place was “Maximum Hold,” at 10.  This all made sense until my next trip, when I discovered “Extreme Hold” at 12.  Given how arbitrary the units were, couldn’t they have made 10 have the top rating?  And since when can you get more hold (or more anything) than Maximum?  Isn’t “Extreme” less than “Maximum”?  The precise calibration of hair gel hold had turned out to be total illusion. 

I almost called Suave for clarification until I remembered my argument with Palmolive customer service.  A sticker on their “new” product had said, “Kills twice the bacteria.”  I called customer service and expressed shock that my old Palmolive was leaving bacteria on my dishes, but they assured me it did not—that both the old and new products killed all the bacteria.  How could this be?  If the old Palmolive killed all the bacteria, how could the new Palmolive kill twice as much?  We went around and around until the service representative said, “Sir, it’s just a slogan.  It doesn’t mean anything.”

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Despite being frazzled a lot of the time, I think my attitude has actually been pretty good.  Still, I sometimes worry.  Tonight Alexa asked me to play a game with her.  (She doesn’t do board games yet; just made-up role-playing games.)  I assumed she meant our standard game, in which I surgically remove her appendix.  But tonight she announced she wanted to play a new game:  Deathbed.  I told her I didn’t know that game, and she told me we could make it up together.  It went fine.  At the end I told her she had to speak her last words.  Her choice:  “Done.”

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A final time-saving tip for “Real Simple”: When it’s time to do big chores, Erin lets me go downstairs to (as she puts it) “play on the computer.” This keeps me out of her hair and gives us something to talk about right before bed.

On that note, I guess I should go. Happy holidays!

2012 Holiday Newsletter

Introduction

Every year I write a Holiday Newsletter and send it with my holiday cards.  As newsletters go, mine isn’t very useful; it doesn’t, for example, describe the highlights of the year.  Actually, I usually focus on a single low point of my year, just to counter-balance all the highlights you’ll read about in other people’s newsletters.  Or it’s simply random—the “secret Santa” of holiday newsletters, you might say.

This year I was stumped for awhile finding a topic.  Amazing as this may seem, I didn’t do anything particularly humiliating in 2012.  So I asked my kids for some ideas, and my daughter Lindsay gave me the idea for this newsletter.  Normally this thing goes to a very small, understanding audience, but as a special treat I’ve decided to extend my Holiday Newsletter to my extended albertnet “family.”  Please just don’t quit after the first paragraph … either read two or more paragraphs or skip the whole thing.

Holiday Newsletter - 2012

Greetings!

I’ll start by saying I’m very happy for this newsletter—it’s nice to be given my say.  So ... what can I report?  Things are pretty good.  Sure, they could be better.  Running and jumping aren’t nearly as easy as they used to be.  I’m getting old.  At least I’ve still got my looks.  And I’ve got shelter and warmth, a fine family, and the food is good.  It’s exactly the same food I’ve been getting my entire life, but I still just love it!  I only wish there were more of it, and I didn’t have to wait so long.  I keep telling them, “Now!  Now!  Now!  Now!” but they never seem to listen.  They often talk back but never actually hurry.

For awhile there things were better than ever.  I’m thinking back to the long-ago cold stretch, around the time we got the previous ornament tree, when the man was in bed all the time.  We lounged around together constantly.  I had to watch out for one of his legs—he’d yowl like crazy whenever I stepped on it.  I could never keep straight which leg it was.  The other thing is, several times a day the man would suddenly start growling and sometimes yowling, and then he’d go for this odd food he kept right next to the bed.  It rattled like my crunchies, but didn’t smell like anything I’d want to eat.  But he’d only eat one, and he never chewed.  Then he’d quiet down again.  But right about the time they got rid of the tree, he stopped eating the crunchies, telling the woman, “If I don’t knock this off I’ll end up an obese misogynist with my own hit radio show!”  (I don’t know what this meant but it made the woman laugh.) 

Anyway, it was a grand time being in bed with him all day, but I got worried after awhile.  He often didn’t even get up to use his litter box (or litter bowl, whatever they call it).  The woman brought him all his food … were his active days over?  I missed hunting with him:  he likes to pick me up and bring me near moths.  I’m still pretty fast with my paws so that’s good fun.  Better yet, he likes to catch a fly by the wing and throw it forcefully to the floor.  For a few seconds the fly is stunned and, unable to fly, tries to run for it.  Easy prey.  Not as much sport, but sooooo tasty:  perfectly crisp—you can’t beat a living, wriggling creature for good mouth-feel.  Anyway, I needn’t have worried about the man.  Eventually he was able to make it downstairs to the office, where I’d get to sit on his lap for most of the day.  Often he’d even put his feet up and make a bridge for me.  By the time the days got warm again, we were hunting partners once more!

Even without a constant bed companion, I’m managing to stay warm.  The bigger of the two small humans—and she’s way bigger than she used to be—is more predictable now.  She pets me a bit too much and too hard and takes inappropriate liberties with the extra-soft fur on my belly, and she talks too much at me, going on and on about my “thick, lush, soft fur,” my “beautiful stripes,” my “enchanting glacier-green eyes,” my “proud Mackerel Tabby lineage,” etc.  But she does provide a good lap.  It’s hard to believe she used to pull my tail.  Oh, and she contrived this amazing thing in the backyard.  It’s full of bird bait, and the birds really flock to it.  But the human never attacks!  She just watches the birds and flips through a book and makes nonsense noises like “chickadee” and “titmouse.”  It’s hard to watch.  If she would just lower that thing a bit, I could kill the birds myself, but I’m too old to leap that high.  So I just watch.  The worst part is when this one squirrel raids the thing.  I hate that squirrel.  He’s so vain, grooming his tail to make it super-fluffy, to take everyone’s attention off his big gut.  He’s surprisingly spry, though, and climbs right down the string, head first, and steals the bird bait.  It pains me that I lack the courage to fight him.  I mean, here I am, a born predator, and I’m afraid of a vegan half my size!  I guess I could chase him, just to save face, and hope he runs up the tree, but what if he stood his ground?

Did I mention my humans don’t feed me enough?  Or often enough?  Maybe you could put in a word for me in your next newsletter.

I do have my pleasures, though.  Sometimes I wander by my bowl, just to check, and discover it’s actually got some milk or something in it!  The small humans are a lot tidier than they used to be, which is too bad, but there are still plenty of scraps on the floor after they feed.  I wish they wouldn’t all put their plates on the counter right after they eat—it’s a lot harder to get up there these days.  The man often puts pans on the floor for me to lick, which is great, but the small humans—forbidden, for some reason, to lick their plates—have started going over them with a rubber spatula if it’s a really tasty sauce.  Thanks a lot, guys.  On a positive note, the humans have started keeping their compost in an open bowl on the counter.  Tasty stuff, but again, it’s getting so hard to jump up there.  One time the bigger small human picked me up and actually set me on the counter, and I was so stoked—until the man started yowling at her and made her put me back down.  What is it with that guy?

So … what else?  Well, they brought in this amazing chair they call “La-Z-Boy.”  Once somebody settles into that, I’m in for some great lap time.  If the woman pulls up a blanket, I have time to wash and nap.  Even the smaller humans will reliably give me a good long lap on that chair, especially if they have a book.  If I hear the words “Percy Jackson” or “Mysterious Benedict Society” I know they’ll be there awhile—unless (as often happens) one of the large humans yells, “Get up and practice your music!”  (Both small humans make nice music on the piano.  The bigger one is doing well with the violin, too:  it no longer sounds like an old animal shelter comrade shrieking.)  The new chair does have a downside:  I’m constantly wanting to sharpen my claws on it, but whenever I do this somebody rushes at me, screeching.  I mean, what am I supposed to do, when the woman keeps moving my scratching post into the garage?  It’s just as well—I can no longer easily reach the scratchy rope wound around the top.  What did they call that rope?  Oh yeah:  “Hemp—a gateway to catnip,” whatever that means.

The man is getting really good at tricking me.  He sits at the computer, all peaceful-like, and lets me get on his lap.  After just a few minutes—about the time my motor starts to wind down—he starts messing with my paws.  At first I’m like, “Aaaah, a little paw massage,” but then I realize he’s cutting the tips off my claws!  I can’t believe I fall for it every time.

Gosh, I’m hungry.  Say, that reminds me.  Every once in awhile the whole family starts bringing all this luggage over to the front door, and things get really exciting.  For some reason, after they’ve done this awhile, they give me a giant bowl, sometimes two bowls, of crunchies!  It’s like the mother lode!  Best of all, right after putting the food down they all leave, so I can eat in peace without worrying about somebody having second thoughts and taking it all away.  I just eat and eat until I can barely move, and then I have a good wash and a good nap, and there’s still food left over!  It’s a paradise of eat/wash/nap the whole day, with nobody around to stop me, and then the whole night, and part of the next day until the food is all gone.  By then I’m too bloated even to wash and I just collapse next to the bowl.  But then there’s no food, and no humans, for the whole day!  I hate it!

I guess the only other thing to report is how puzzled I get with the humans’ behavior at night.  They’re always closing doors and I keep getting trapped downstairs.  I don’t really mind until I’ve slept most of the night and gotten bored, and want to do something fun like walking on a human’s face.  But I can’t get up to the bedroom!  I stand at the downstairs door yelling “Now!  Now!  Now!  Now!” but they never come down.  Not the smartest creatures, but they do know how to scruffle me under the chin and around the ears, just how I like it.  So I guess I’ll let them live.  (Kidding!)

I guess that’s about it.  I hope you’re all getting plenty of food, plenty of warmth, and plenty of sleep!

Love,

        

ooo(Misha)

Drawing by Alexa, March 3, 2008

2010 Holiday Newsletter

NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for mild mature content.

Introduction

Every year I write a Holiday Newsletter and send it with my holiday cards. As newsletters go, mine isn’t very useful; it doesn’t, for example, describe the highlights of the year. It’s actually more likely to focus on a single low point of my year, just to counter-balance all the highlights you’ll read about in other people’s newsletters. Or it’s simply random—the “secret Santa” of holiday newsletters, you might say.

In keeping with the tradition I started last year, I’ve decided to extend my Holiday Newsletter to my extended blog “family.” Enjoy.

Note: please do NOT read this newsletter aloud to your kids!

Seasons Greetings!

Before I get to the standard good tidings, I’d like to make a humble request of all my friends and family: please don’t tell your kids that Santa doesn’t exist! This is the time of year when I get really nervous that somebody’s going to spill the beans. I was at the library with my kids recently and saw a book was on display titled The Truth About Santa Claus. Seeing this, I felt the same kind of panic as a teenager whose mom has walked into his room before he can hide his “Playboy” magazines. What if my kid saw that book? The title alone suggests treachery.

Why, you might ask, should we perpetuate this Santa myth? Well, for one thing, it is charming to watch our benighted children participate in it. I’ve loved reading Alexa’s letters to Santa over the years, asking for mundane or impossible things (a “new live rabbit” and “more aquafresh” one year; aquafresh and “miny piano” the next).

A couple of years ago on Christmas eve, right after her goodnight hug, Alexa suddenly assumed a panicked expression, like someone who just realized she left her purse in the train station, and said, “Wait! We have to put out some cookies for Santa!” Last year she left him meticulous instructions: “To tell the stockings apart, look at the license plates with our names on them in the loop on the top of our stocking.”

The myth is good for adults, too. It keeps us on our toes. For example, Alexa and Lindsay have somehow arranged with Erin and me that every year they get to sleep under the Christmas tree for the last three nights before Christmas. This makes it a bit tricky when it’s time to fill the stockings and deposit the presents. It’s fun going around like a cat burglar, stuffing a stocking right above their sleeping heads.

The whole Santa mythology also opens the door for useful discussions with our kids. I appreciate the chance to dispel my daughters’ natural skepticism even while encourage critical thinking. For example, they asked how a bunch of little elves could make enough toys for all the children in the world. “Oh, believe me, they don’t,” I replied. “How could they? Santa outsources most of his production, just like most corporations. I mean, think about it—would elves really make Aquafresh?”

When the kids asked about the whole “he knows when you’ve been bad or good” bit, I became indignant. “That’s just a myth that parents came up with to try to trick their kids into behaving. I won’t lie to you: Santa doesn’t know what you do and he doesn’t care. Every kid gets presents, even the ones who are little monsters all year. But you should be good for its own sake.” With this lecture I hoped to instill the impulse to question authority—but within bounds.

Another reason I’m opposed to exposing the Santa myth is that, even if your kid is ready for the truth, his younger sibling probably isn’t, and there’s no chance of the older one keeping a secret. Decades ago when my older brothers learned the truth, they wasted no time in breaking the news to me. They couldn’t wait to watch me cry, and they weren’t disappointed. Meanwhile, once a younger sibling learns the awful truth, he tells everyone in his class. Some of those kids will tell their even younger siblings, and now you’ve just trashed the whole holiday. Meanwhile, we can’t really expose the Santa myth without giving up the Tooth Fairy too. After all, once our kids realize we’re capable of lying to them consistently and repeatedly, their skepticism will naturally increase.

Ah, now you want me to defend the Tooth Fairy myth! Fair enough. Frankly, the Santa legend is fun and all, but the Tooth Fairy is something we need. Why? Imagine the alternative, which is presenting the losing-teeth business straight: “Here’s the deal, kid. One by one your teeth will get loose. Your tongue will get tired as it pushes that tooth around, until the tooth is hanging on by one little strand, at which point you’ll taste blood. Eventually you’ll yank the tooth out, which will hurt, and then you’ll have this funny-looking gap in your mouth. The next tooth that comes in will be oversized and as this process repeats you’ll get uglier and uglier until you get braces, which are truly hideous, and which will hurt all the time. Sorry, but that’s just the way it goes. Life’s a bitch.”

Compared to that, giving up a few coins or bills each time to create goodwill is a great bargain. For trivial amounts of money these kids will actually look forward to all this unpleasantness. Almost four months before she lost her first tooth, Alexa said something so interesting I wrote it down: “I wish my teeth would fall out so I would get money from the tooth fairy and I wouldn’t have to earn it.” I asked her what she would buy with the money. She replied, “A gallon of milk for Lindsay.” That’s not even a real expenditure, since we’d buy milk anyway. It’s a zero-sum game that makes it fun to lose teeth!

Here is Alexa with her first lost tooth (July ’07):

Here is Lindsay with her first lost tooth (November ’09):

Awhile back we had a close call with the Tooth Fairy myth. I was loading groceries into the back of the car when Alexa suddenly asked me straight out if the Tooth Fairy really exists. It seems one of Alexa’s classmates was spreading the evil truth about this myth. “Don’t listen to kids, they make stuff up,” I told her. She said the kid’s mother had told it to him. Man. I’d love to get an audience with that mother and excoriate her for turning her kid into a merciless little killjoy, running around the playground sharing the bad news. I’d give that woman a taste of her own medicine: “Ah, so Truth is that important to you, eh? Well then you’ll be happy to know I just told the whole PTA how you paid for your Prius—that is, with a stock portfolio comprising equal parts Monsanto, Phillip-Morris, Halliburton, and bundled credit default swap instruments!”

We had another close call with Lindsay’s last lost tooth: I simply forgot to swap the tooth for the money during the night. I sneaked into the kids’ bedroom in the morning with a $5 bill (the smallest thing I could find), and climbed into Lindsay’s bed as if to snuggle. I reached under pillow, extracted the tooth from the special Tooth Fairy purse she’d put it in, palmed the tooth with two fingers while using other two to insert the bill in the purse, and pulled my arm out just as she woke up. She immediately checked the purse and found the money. It was unbelievably close, like the action movie cliché of people running and diving for cover mere seconds before something explodes. Which, in fact, Alexa did when she saw the five-spot. She found it totally unfair that she had never gotten that much. She was in tears. I had to scramble and explain that the Tooth Fairy pays a flat rate, based on the prime lending rate set by the government. I acknowledged that there are regional variances, of course; that in the Bay Area the tooth rate would be a bit higher than, say, a third world country. During the ensuing discussion Alexa seemed to forget all about the $5. These kinds of trial-under-fire give me some of my finest parenting moments.

So you may be wondering, when is it time to reveal the truth about Santa and the Tooth Fairy? The answer is: never. Let the kids find out on their own, or—and this is the best case scenario—let the truth dawn on them so gradually that they go from believing the myth to helping to perpetuate it without even realizing it. This will prepare them for adulthood, when they go along with the greatest mass-delusion of all: money.

Well, I was hoping to give you all kinds of updates about the Albert family, but I see I’m out of room. Have a great holiday!

Love,

dana albert blog

2009 Holiday Newsletter

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Introduction

As a described in my previous post, every year I write a Holiday Newsletter and send it to some of the people on my mailing list for holiday cards. As newsletters go, it isn't very helpful; it doesn't, for example, describe the highlights of the year. It's actually more likely to focus on a single low point, though I don't restrict myself to any established format or style. I've decided this year to extend my Holiday Newsletter to my extended blog “family.” Enjoy.

December 2009

Happy holidays to your whole family!

I hope nobody is bothered that I didn’t say “Merry Christmas.” My greeting simply acknowledges that there is no single official holiday in this country. Accepting all winter holiday traditions would seem to be a classic example of American freedom. But really, there’s a limit on this freedom: we’re not exactly free to ignore the “meaning” of the holiday, whichever one(s) we do (or fail to) observe. I feel this way with most of our holidays … at the end of every Memorial Day, for example, I get this creeping guilt that while I enjoyed the time off, I didn’t spend so much as a moment thinking of our fallen soldiers.

With this nagging pressure already upon me, I was struck dumb upon entering Macy’s, on the day after Thanksgiving, to see (among the garish fake evergreens) a giant sign reading, “Believe!” The sign was repeated throughout the store—part of a major holiday shopping campaign. Since the only things I actually exhort my children to believe in are Santa and the Tooth Fairy, I took this pretty hard—almost as if the signs had said, “J’accuse!”

Can’t I get through a holiday without having to tap my spiritual side? I have to admit, I kind of envy the British, with their simple “bank holidays” that are just totally free days off with no strings attached. If I’m not mistaken, the English even have a “flip-all day” (though they don’t say “flip”—I’ve made a word substitution, this being a family newsletter). But this envy is an affront to my already battered patriotism, so I’m feeling the need to defend my country by criticizing England. As time off from work and increased retail activity seem to be the two things all winter holidays have in common, in this holiday newsletter I’m going to explore another nexus of time off and consumerism: my harrowing experience shopping in London during our summer vacation there.

The difference between the retail experience in the US vs. the UK is largely a matter of ideology. The US approach is “The customer is always right.” We’re wooed, coddled, pampered, and encouraged at every step. The UK approach, on the other hand, as with so many aspects of British life, seems to be “Soldier on, and keep your chin up.” It seems the Brits would rather showcase their famous stoicism than actually have a good experience as consumers.

Americans have no stomach for things like inconvenience or poor value, and our retail providers know this. Dignity and civility are not expected, or even encouraged, among American shoppers. Consider this text from a Kleenex box: “Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip. Tell calm, cool and collected to take a hike. When tons of stuff stuffs up your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud!” (The French text on the same box, ostensibly targeted at French-Canadians, is much tamer; instead of the stiff upper lip part it merely says, “Vous êtes bouché?” which roughly translates “Are you stopped up?”)

This difference in approach was evident throughout our time in London. First, the lack of wooing: we received no junk mail at the house we were staying in, and only one flyer was left on the porch, from a place called US Pizza. We could have stayed out of the malls entirely except for a little mishap we had in the bathroom. There was no bathroom counter, so when Alexa was done getting a drink of water, she left the glass balancing precariously in the sink, where I tipped it over, breaking it. Not wanting to be a bad houseguest, I immediately set out to replace it.

Back home, I could have walked to a local mall and had a pretty good chance of finding a Bathroom Drinking Glass Emporium. Failing that, our local Crate & Barrel Factory Outlet would have a number of glasses to choose from, all of them fortuitously on sale. But this was no ordinary drinking glass—it was designed to sit in a chromed steel ring that juts out from the bathroom wall (a needlessly clever solution to the simple problem of English sinks not having counters). So this glass had to be larger at the top and then taper down, like a little shelf, so the narrower bottom part would go through the ring and the glass would nestle securely in the ring. But even if Crate & Barrel didn’t have glasses like this, the entirely cheerful and apologetic clerk would offer to order one for me, and since they get deliveries from the other store twice a day, I could stop by later that same day and pick it up. And if the other store didn’t have it, why, they could get one from China within days, and it would just so happen to be on sale for only a few dollars.

But this was England, and nobody I asked seemed to have any idea where to buy such a thing. They looked at me like I was asking where to buy a replacement laser prism for a 3-D hologram machine that hadn’t been invented yet. A couple of people recommended Marks & Spencer, so we headed over there. It was a pretty nice department store, though the whole place had just two restrooms, both out of service during our visit. I found the housewares department and described to the clerk what I was looking for: a small drinking glass for the bathroom, that sits in a little ring that sticks out from the wall. The clerk looked at me like I was crazy. “Now, what is it?” she asked.

I described the glass again, mentioning the larger diameter at the top, and drawing in the air how its sides taper in so the ring will hold it. She assured me there is no such product in existence. So I went hunting for it on my own, and found it right away. I brought her over and showed her. Instead of admitting that my description had been spot-on, and wondering aloud how she could have been so dense, she said, “Oh, you’re looking for a toothbrush holder!”

I thought it would end there: I figured I’d buy two glasses for maybe $10 or $15 total, and be on my merry way. (I needed two, because our hosts’ bathroom had two ring/glass sets, and the new glass wouldn’t match the remaining old one.) But it turns out Marks & Spencer doesn’t sell the glass part separately. You have to buy the whole set—the glass, the ring, and the mounting bracket—for £25 (roughly $45 after the murderous exchange rate and usurious credit card fee), meaning the pair would be about $90. I naively asked, “Can’t I just buy the glass separately?” She looked at me like I was daft. “Why would you want to do that?” she asked. I explained that I’d broken a glass, and she looked taken aback.

This shouldn’t have surprised me, but we hadn’t been in London for very long and I hadn’t yet realized that Brits evidently never break anything. My first exposure to this strange phenomenon came at the grocery store when Lindsay knocked a jar of something to the floor and it broke. Other shoppers gasped and stared, like a meteorite had just come plunging through the ceiling and bored several feet into the floor. When I was a kid, and my brothers and I clumsily broke something in a store, we thought little of it (even though we were craven types given to persecution mania). We’d even compete to see who could best mimic the bored “Wet cleanup, aisle 3” that came over the PA system. But here, I almost expected a Hazmat team to arrive in radiation suits, and for my whole family to be fitted with scarlet letters before leaving the store. We felt the same way after breaking a drinking glass at a London restaurant a few days later.

I asked the Marks & Spencer clerk if there was any way she could sell me the glass by itself, since it was all I needed. “But you see, it’s sold as a set,” she reiterated patiently, as if talking to a small child. I asked what I would possibly do with two extra rings. “You could keep them as spares,” she said. I guess she figured that anybody hapless enough to actually break a glass toothbrush holder is capable of breaking anything.

My search lasted two more weeks, becoming a central theme of our vacation. Half the people I asked were as mystified by “toothbrush holder” as by my description. Finally we found a housewares specialty shop in Ealing that could order just the glass. It seemed like a fairly high-end place, but I figured not paying for the metal hardware would keep the price relatively low. Of course they had nothing in stock, but could order it. “It’ll take about three to four weeks,” the clerk said breezily. When’s the last time any consumer item took that long to get in the States? Still, we figured if the price were right, and it could be shipped directly to the house there, that might be okay. But then he told us the price.

As you’ve doubtless observed, when something costs a lot in the U.S., the clerk generally eases you into the news carefully, sometimes employing fancy names like “timepiece” or “eyeshade system” to reinforce the value even as the quote is delivered. But the English housewares guy cut right to the chase and said, as casually as could be, “It’s £80.” £80?! Was he out of his mind? What’s it made of—crown jewels? That’s like $145, for a fricking drinking glass, and I’d need two of them. What did we look like—billionaires? I thought I was going to have a coughing fit.

Finally, days before the end of our stay, after hours of searching online, I found a place called B&Q in Acton Town. It was on a far-flung subway line, in a dreary part of the city along a loud highway, and when I got there I realized it was kind of the English equivalent of our Home Depot chain. Why anybody would want to emulate the most god-awful of all American retail establishments is beyond me; perhaps it seemed an irresistible challenge to out-awful us while putting the famous British forbearance to its ultimate test.

At least B&Q had a few toothbrush holders to choose from. I found a relatively cheap one, but it was crudely made of cheap plastic and might as well have had “POXY RUBBISH” embossed on it. I’d given up the dream of finding a glass for sale without the hardware, but did discover a glass/holder set of decent quality for about £20. The trouble was, they only had one left and I needed two. I didn’t bother fantasizing about buying the display model (much less at a discount), but I did toy with the idea of stealing it. I could just shove it under my jacket … but of course I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t much fancy spending the final days of my vacation in an English prison, even if it is the birthplace of habeas corpus.

Thus, I had to go home empty-handed and make another trip to B&Q the next day. Customer Service had promised to hold two of the toothbrush holders for me, but when I arrived, they hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was talking about. Luckily, because the toothbrush holders came in bright orange boxes, I happened to spot them on a shelf behind the Customer Service desk, and pointed them out. With a look that said “Boy are you stupid!” the clerk begrudgingly handed them over.

Now I felt I was truly in the home stretch. All that remained now was paying up. I went to the self-service checkout, scanned the boxes, and got out my credit card. Alas, right away I came up against yet another obstacle: their payment system only accepted chip cards. I didn’t have £40 cash on me—that’s a lot of foreign currency for a tourist to carry two days before heading home. But before I even had a chance to complain, a cashier had appeared. I figured word had gotten around about the clueless tourist: “Better go help out that American bloke at checkout. He’s a right dozy blighter, bound to cock things up completely.” I explained that the POS terminal wouldn’t take my card. “We don’t take credit cards,” she said blandly. I handed her my debit card. “We don’t take this either,” she said. She seemed almost relieved, as if accepting my payment would be some kind of defeat.

I asked if she meant that they could only accept chip cards, not magstripe. She looked utterly nonplussed, like I’d asked if her mother had problems metabolizing Technicolor herring-liver pustules. So I asked her what the problem was. She stared at my card and said, “It doesn’t have one of those … things.” Suddenly I noticed that she was holding a fancy wireless payment card terminal with more features than the basic self-service one. (Given my line of work, I have specialized knowledge of these devices.) I grabbed it from her and said, “Look. Have you ever noticed this thing up at the top here? It’s a magstripe reader.” I swiped my card and completed the payment. She continued to stare blankly at me, like, “Just look at this bloody plonker. Americans are even bigger eejits than I thought.” But I didn’t care, because I was done! I made my way back to the house, installed the new glasses, forbade my kids to go anywhere near them, and got on with my life.

So. To summarize the differences in retail cultures:
USA: Believe!
UK: I can’t believe this!

Whether or not you manage to invest this holiday season with satisfying spiritual reflection, I sincerely hope you have an enjoyable time. And if, like me, you don’t take particular pleasure in the consumer aspect of the season, take heart: at least in this country you’re always right!

Love,

The Suppressed Holiday Newsletter

Introduction

Every year I send out a holiday newsletter. In general I’m not a huge fan of holiday newsletters that try, in a page or two, to backfill a year’s worth of news for neglected friends and family members. Certain common styles of newsletter can be downright annoying, such as the boastful aren’t-we-special type. Back in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s my mom actually wrote a totally satirical holiday newsletter that has always been an inspiration to me. I wish I still had a copy. Some parts I remember well: “My husband’s favorite thing is picking up his welfare check—and then it’s off to the races! He sure loves to watch the horses,” and “Little Johnny hasn’t talked to us since he got his Sony Walkman. I’m actually afraid to bathe him, as he might get electrocuted. He keeps pretty much to himself.”

With the memory of my mom’s letter as my guide, I wrote my first holiday newsletter in 1999. It was completely satirical, drawing from my understanding of dramatic irony as I learned it in college. The newsletter concerned a cheerful narrator (myself) describing a lovely wedding at which he had a little alcohol-related trouble, including this episode: “I just couldn’t get comfortable in my chair and kind of dropped to the floor. I didn’t land very well, and I guess the restaurant food was really rich because I kind of choked up a little bit of it. I kind of landed in it, too, but there really wasn’t that much (in fact, I was tempted to think I hadn't really choked up anything at all, except Erin’s friends had photos). Anyway, if you read about that in any other newsletters, don't make too much of it–in fact, all Erin’s friends specifically said it wasn’t that big a deal when I asked. Anyway, a great wedding, and congratulations to the bride and groom!”

Since then I’ve tried various satirical modes, and only last year did I actually fail to get my submittal past our family’s editorial panel, which consists of Erin. She complained that my newsletter “gave [her] a headache.” She didn’t censor it, exactly, but said it could only go to my people. (The newsletter traditionally goes to a relatively small subset of our total holiday card distribution anyway.) Considering her point—that it was just too dark a letter to be mailed in the same envelope as a nice card—I relented, and suppressed the newsletter, replacing it with a farewell letter to our 1984 Volvo, which we put to rest that year. (The Volvo essay, by the way, was my first non-satirical holiday newsletter.)

Because this is a blog, not anything you get in the mail, and you have sought it out here of your own free will, I’m now posting the infamous (or at least non-famous) suppressed newsletter for your literary delectation. As my favorite Thai waiter liked to say, “Enjoy please enjoy.”

The Suppressed Newsletter

December, 2008

Dear Family & Friends,

It’s holiday newsletter time! Alas, I fear I’m too burnt on the season to really write much. A recent mall experience kind of did us in. It took half an hour just to park, and the mall itself was mobbed. There was a giant Christmas tree, but Erin and I steered the kids around it because Santa was there and we couldn’t bear to wait in some giant line. What kind of parents are we to deprive our kids of that experience? See—I’m really in the wrong mood to write a heartwarming newsletter. So, I’ve decided to try something new and turn the project over to the kids this year. The innocence and fresh perspective of a child is such a nice change anyway. (Because my kids don't type, I've had to help out, and in some cases I kind of paraphrased what they said, but I’ve tried to remain as true to their young spirits as possible.)

ALEXA: I love Christmas but it’s a bit confusing because Daddy doesn’t always tell me same things about it that my friends hear. Like, Daddy says Santa doesn't care if you’re good or bad. Apparently Santa actually has no way to keep track of us, and has bigger fish to fry anyway. So all that stuff about “He knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake”? Totally false. I could be absolutely awful all year and would still get presents. (I'm supposed to be good anyway, but for some ideological reason having nothing to do with extortion.)

LINDSAY: Christmas is great because we get these advent calendars. There’s a big picture with all these little flaps on it, one per day, and there's a chocolate figure behind each flap! Every morning we run downstairs and get down our calendars and find the date. Alexa helps me with that. The other part of this tradition is Daddy telling us how when he was a kid the family all shared this cloth advent calendar that Grandma Judy made. There was one pocket per day and they were all lined up (so there was no fun hunting around for the date), and instead of chocolates there were just mini candy canes. Each kid got a candy cane every fourth day using this modulo system devised by Grandpa Harry, where you divide the date by four and take the remainder. Every morning Daddy reminds me how much better we have it, getting a tasty chocolate every single day. I wish he’d teach me useful expressions like, “Yeah, sucks to be you!” but so far he hasn’t.

ALEXA: Another confusing holiday thing is the way Daddy tells the Rudolph story. We lost the board book but I remember it well—I made him read it a million times. Here’s how it goes: Rudolph is a reindeer with a disease, called alcoholism, that makes all the blood vessels burst in his nose so it’s all red, and the other reindeer won't let him join in their reindeer games. Lucky for Rudolph, there’s this doe named Clarice who is attracted to him precisely because he’s an outcast—she subconsciously wants to gall her oppressive father. Herbie the misfit elf befriends Rudolph out of sheer loneliness, which is never the right reason. So Rudolph is pretty miserable. Then there’s the Abominable Snowman, who only wishes he were abominable, when in reality he’s just as uptight and judgmental as everybody else. About the only decent guy in the whole scene is of course Santa, who is a truly wise and kind man but struggles with workforce problems (nobody wants to work in that frigid place). So Santa has to put up with these snooty reindeer and all these elves with Napoleon complexes (just look how they ostracize Herbie!). Finally Santa gets fed up, and—just to humiliate the other reindeer, to punish them for their bigotry—puts Rudolph at the head of the sleigh. This backfires because the other reindeer, to protect their own egos, convince themselves of the absurd notion that Rudolph is only in the lead because his nose is so bright it cuts through the fog (as though they’d never had fog before). Thus, they dodge their comeuppance by pretending to “use” Rudolph for his mere utility rather than acknowledging his intrinsic worth as a reindeer.

LINDSAY: For the first time, we went Christmas shopping as a family this year. Actually we weren’t Christmas shopping per se, but just shopping for new boots for Alexa during the holiday rush. Alexa hurt her foot at school because her footwear wasn’t good enough, so we made a special trip and now she’s got these expensive leather boots and I got NOTHING. It really chaps me when she gets new stuff. I usually don’t mind getting hand-me-downs from my sister because she gets her clothes used, too. All our clothes come from Grandma Coral, who gets them at thrift stores. She gets me these sweet princess dresses but my ‘rents don’t let me wear them much, saying it’s too cold in our house. (I have to admit, it is pretty cold, and we’re not to touch the thermostat without permission.) Anyway, Alexa tried to console me about the boots, saying she waited weeks for them while her mom hunted everywhere, but then Daddy cut in and said he had to wait until he was about thirty before he got any quality leather footwear. A broken record, that guy. Anyway, the ‘rents say we'll probably not make Christmas shopping a family tradition, which is just as well. The place was a mob scene and I was pretty wrecked by the end.

ALEXA: We might rent the original “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” movie this year. But Daddy warns me that the movie is going to be a lot different than the book, especially from way he has always read it. I can read the book for myself now and it’s amazing how different Daddy’s version is. Here’s more or less how he tells it: “The Grinch hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season, but don’t ask me why. No one knows quite knows the reason. It could be his shoes were a little too tight. It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right. It could be he couldn’t stand the sight of all those Whos down in Whoville trying to pretend they’re all glowing with real spirit and feeling but who are actually caught up in a whirlwind of shopping frenzy, ignited by the expert mass marketers who are playing them like suckers, marching them out to the malls like soldiers, figuring out just how much they can gouge them, just how much they can capitalize on the fears the Whos have of seeming cheap, of seeming unmoved by the spirit. The Whos have actually learned to enjoy the celebration of consumer excess that has spawned entire industries like the ‘gift’ industry that makes worthless gewgaws and trinkets that are called ‘gifts’ simply because you’d never buy them for yourself, and of course when the Whos get these they pretend to be elated when really they're thinking, ‘What the hell am I going to do with this thing?’ Or maybe his heart was two sizes too small. But somehow I doubt that’s it.” Well, it’s Lindsay's turn now, or I'd tell you all about how unrealistic the rest of the story is, with the Whos holding hands and singing after their whole village was ransacked. Daddy says the story should have ended with days of riots, which galvanize the Whos into really looking at themselves, and realizing how petty they all are, and they turn to the Grinch as some sort of oracle, or guru, since he alone broke through the thin veneer of good will and exposed their Who society for the gussied-up sham that it really is. I kind of agree, that would be much a more satisfying ending.

LINDSAY: Another family tradition we have, though it’s in the fall, is going to Apple Hill in the gold country. There are all these apple orchards and they have markets selling gobs of apples, and little shops selling apple pies and other treats. Best of all was the caramel apple. It was right at eye level in the display case at one of the shops. We'd had one last year so I was pretty sure the ‘rents would buy another if I asked nicely. They’re real big on asking nicely and remind me about it every single time I ever ask for anything. You’d think they’d get over it. Anyway, the other problem is that I couldn't remember “caramel apple”--the name of it. It had been a year since I’d last had any. I tried to reason it out. It’s on a stick, like those yummy lemonade popsicles Mommy makes. But these aren’t frozen lemonade, they’re apples covered with caramel. Finally I said, really nicely, “Can I please have one of those caramel-ade apple-pops please?” Then they laughed at me. You see the hypocrisy here? I have to say please, so nobody gets offended, and then they laugh in my face. It’s not just the please thing either. We’re not even supposed to say “I know.” Like, Alexa will say, “Lindsay, some trees can live up to a thousand years,” and I’ll say, “I KNOW.” The ‘rents think that makes me sound like I’m bragging, or like I’m implying that Alexa doesn’t know anything I don’t. So instead of “I know” I’m supposed to say “Indeed.” Who says “indeed”? Nobody, that’s who. On the other hand, the ‘rents aren’t totally inflexible on this, as long as I don’t say “I know.” Like, I can say “True, true” if I want, or even “Man, you ain’t never lie!” (even though that’s not good grammar).

Well, the kids have had their say. I guess you can tell we’re all doing really well! Have a great Holiday Season and a better 2009!

Love,