Christmas Wrap-Up

Does The Song Really Go, "Angels We Have Heard Are High"?

Nothing got me in the true Christmas spirit faster than wrapping my first present for a customer Christmas Eve morning: The Marijuana Grower's Bible.

Have A Curmudgeonly Christmas

Two of my all-time literary heroes--one a Clevelander with international renown as an uber-whiner, the other a local sportswriting legend (in my book)--came in the store on back-to-back days last week doing last minute shopping. Despite having edited both of them years ago (well, you don't really edit these two geniuses, but I tried), they didn't recognize me. One wanted a CD with classical Christmas renditions. "I don't like 'Jingle Bells,'" he said, becoming, for me at least, the first person ever to utter that humbug sentence. I found him a cheap CD and as he inspected the track listings approvingly, he said, "This will work. I'll put it on and get depressed." The other came in and wanted a gift certificate. After taking an almost confrontational minute to explain the concept of gift cards as opposed to the obsolete certificates, he finally forked over the money and I charged up his card. I couldn't help but notice, after I showed him where on the cardboard envelope to write the amount, that he wrote his wife's full name, first and last. Having remembered his patented crankiness a couple years ago when he came in looking for knitting books (incongruous enough) for his spouse, and then having the pleasure of wrapping the knitting books for him ("Which style of wrapping do you like?" "I don't care." "Wanna bow on that? It makes it look more special." "Nah."), I said to him this year, as he tucked the gift card away in his pocket, "The easy way to shop, hunh?" He replied, "Too easy. But it beats having to deal with her opening gifts she doesn't want." So I guess the knitting books hadn't gone over too well.

I Am Not An Animal, I Am A Human Being Warning

I received not one but two ice-scrapers-in-a-mitt, so if you happen to see me in a snowy mall parking lot pawing cars, I am not groping foreigners or attempting to rip off an ever-valuable Cleveland Heights parking sticker. I'm only trying to see clearly my way home.

Priceless Moments Money Can't Buy (Only Facilitate)

• Watching my ten-year-old nephew react like a TV studio audience member being invited to "Come on down!" upon opening his family's new Play Station 3. You won't see that much glee emanating out of somebody in Cleveland until one of our pro teams wins a championship and then I'll be the one jumping in my nephew's arms and doing a dance with him.
• As we wound down the gift-unwrappings, my niece texted her boyfriend. Spying this, my mother, in full matriarch mode, decreed that later that night at her house for dinner, all electronic devices would be banned. So, naturally, later that afternoon, as she recounted her girlhood Christmas memories, my cellphone as well as my nieces' and nephews', started chiming simultaneously. Luckily she laughed, so we were spared the ignominy of eating our delicious roast beast in the cold garage.

Priceless Moment Only Great Cooking Could Bring About

After dinner, sitting around the family room, my two brothers-in-law and my oldest nephew all fell soundly asleep until one of them--and not the expected one--hiccupped-snored so loudly that not only did he wake himself up but the other two, all at the same time.

What Have You Sold For Me Lately?, or It's All Over Now Moment

I swear, the first box of newly arrived books I opened on Christmas Eve morning at the store contained some kids' Easter books.

Bobby Womack-It's All Over Now