Damien Galeone

When I was a kid, I found that the only good aspect of Christmas having happened rather than Christmas going to happen was the presentation, comparison, and discussion about loot with my comrades. This took place as soon as possible after Christmas morning, which, in the kid interpretation meant about 7:13 a.m.

By 7:14 am, I was chomping at the bit to go show Eddie my toys. My parents would usually draw me back to our house with the offer of breakfast foods topped with maple syrup. However, at 10ish all bets were off and I’d be storming across the street with my booty.

Perhaps the best part was that when you have a best friend, your loot becomes his and vice versa. I wasn’t jealous of his toys, because they became my toys by extension. It falls under the Latin legal precedent, de buticus est mea buticus. And so as I ran the thirty yards between our houses with my baseball glove and a platoon of military toys, I knew that they would only be enhanced by what he had.

At some point in our teens, our thirst for toys waned and we looked for things of use, and like most kids in our neighborhood, things to use outside. Running across the street for a booty conference didn’t happen on Christmas morning, but rather later that week. And when we showed off our gifts, it was clothing, bows and arrows, pen-flashlights, pocket warmers, jeans, stereos and tape players, eventually CD players, and enough Drakkar to win the Battle of the Somme. Nevertheless, the question of the week was “So, what’d you get?”

My brother floated the idea yesterday.

“Hey, I think I’m going to set up a Zoom meeting for the family on Christmas.”

“Great idea!” I said as if I had mentioned in the previous text, which I had.

“Almost everyone is in. Even Danny.”

This was big. My Uncle Danny has long been famous within the family for his iffy views on family get togethers. Sometimes he comes, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he comes and disappears without a trace.

At this time of year, I am usually heartened by the traditions that involve my visit home to my parents’ house. At this point, I would have travelled through the airports with their Christmassy atmospheres and picked up a gift or two on the way if my layovers allowed. My parents would have picked me up at Philadelphia International a couple of days ago. My mom would have taken my cheesesteak order in the car on the way home and my dad and I would have played our countdown my trip game.

“Well, you have two more weeks.” We count down like this until the day I leave. On the day I leave, tinged with mourning we count down the hours, supplanting it with “Oh, listen, we’ll see you in the summer.”    

I’d spend my time relaxing and watching football with my dad. We’d go to Barnes and Noble the day before Christmas Eve, as per tradition, and buy books and sip 12,000-calorie coffee drinks. I’d visit my brother for a night of tipsy debauchery; my liver would sue for separation. When Larry (my liver’s name) had (partially) recovered, we’d visit the Langhorne Hotel – my home away from home away from home. And I’d be gearing up for a night of food and fun with my wild and zany family.

Well it’s almost Christmas. Normally, I’d be preparing for a holiday visit home. I’d be buying gifts and stressing about a flight. I’d be stressing about the layover times and reading up on airline disasters each morning.

Ho Ho Ho.

Prague is usually quite charming in this season as well. Markets and music in squares, done-up trees, stands with ginger bread and hotdogs, and pools of carp awaiting a serious bludgeoning.    

But of course, the world is not in an ideal state. There’s a pandemic raging and you know that unless you live under a rock in a cave on the dark side of Neptune. Or you’re a Republican. Who also believe that though Donald Trump recently got his ass kicked in an election, he’s claiming he won it. He has no proof. He has lost 48 court cases. He still won’t stop.

It would be kind of funny to imagine little Donny stamping his foot and crying about the election, threatening to take his veto stamp and go home so nobody else can play government. But thousands are dying from that pesky virus each day and instead of helping any of them, little Donny seems far more intent on saving a face that has long since sailed off to a historical level of pathetic while he literally poisons a democracy that had been around for two hundred and forty years before he waddled into the place. Also it’s not funny because lots of people believe little Donny, not because he has zero evidence, but because they’re in his cult. They have hats. A whopping 27 Republican politicians have relocated their balls to admit that Joe Biden won. That means than about 220 congressional Republicans won’t admit that Joe Biden won the presidential election, which he did by 7 million votes. The election was more than a month ago. It doesn’t bode well.

In order to steel ourselves against the negative influences this year, we got a tree. Or, as Burke suggested, a big tree.

It is a truth long known that when a man’s floor is covered in chick peas and he’s cradling a syringe of urine, he is compelled to take stock of where his life has gone.  

Tuesday, 4:20 pm

My day of teaching done, I was ready to celebrate with an early evening of not speaking at all and not looking at my computer. It’s at this time that I noticed that my cat was visiting her litter box more often than I will in about four decades.  

Though unlikely to pay off, I decided on the direct approach: “Hey, why do you keep going to the bathroom?”

She decided against answering just then and I was forced to look into her box and push around her sand. The presence of no clumps made me go “Huh.” But over the next hour, back she went every few minutes and posed herself in the urine-stance. To no avail. Nothing came out and she just stared at the wall with a blank-confused expression that I will probably mimic when I’m 86 years old and my prostate has its own gravitational pull.

We went to google. Cat’s constipated. Cat can’t pee. What is a blocked urethra? The first option I commiserated with. The second was probably a urinary tract infection. The third would kill her in a day. I called the vet.

The vet. When we moved in to this little neck of the Prague woods, I did the “walk around.” You know, when you mosey around your new neighborhood in search of pubs, but pretending you’re excited by other facilities, shops, and services you find there that don’t offer booze.

That is, of course, unless it’s a medical service, a grocery store, or a brothel. Medical services near your house are always welcome. Sometimes I leave my house holding my breath and try to make it to the vet without passing out, just to see if I choke on a chicken bone what my chances are. I figure a chicken bone’s a chicken bone whether it’s in the windpipe of a Doberman or an over-zealous ESL teacher. A local grocery store is wanted for obvious reasons. And brothels, well, there’s nothing more comforting that sitting on your couch with a good book and knowing hookers are delivering joy and gonorrhea somewhere nearby.

Normally at this time of year, we would be in the full swing of the holiday season. The lode from the Halloween candy would be down to chocolate raisons and jolly ranchers. The stores would be putting up Christmas decorations and people would be complaining heartily about that. And this week, we would all be looking forward to (or dreading) Thanksgiving.

Despite all of the factors surrounding Thanksgiving, what it really boils down to is this: it’s a day many of us spend with our extended family, a tableful of complex carbohydrates, football, and alcohol. And how you feel about Thanksgiving really depends on you and your situation. While one might spend the week before imagining a gravy pond in mashed potatoes, another might shudder about Uncle Jim in his red hat talking about how Venezuela and George Soros stole the election. One might be washing their eating pants, while another might worry that their college freshman daughter’s lecture on the idealization of the American tradition.

Ah, holidays.

I have spent a lot of time recently considering what I’m going to look like in my declining years. These are questions not easily answered and they require an awful lot of thought.

They include questions such as: Am I going to employ a hat, do suspenders look good on a guy like me, what level of comfort in public can be maintained while still not wearing sweatpants to a bar?

Important.

There is, of course, the comfort level. Were there no rules in pubic, I would spend my late years visiting pubs and restaurants and even governmental offices in lounge wear, or clothing that I had on when I got out of bed that morning. And while I do employ a ‘who cares’ attitude in most things fashion, I want that to stop short of me being asked by police for contact numbers.

There is also a public trust level. Older people are often looked to for help by those on the street. A man in sweatpants is almost never chosen for help, unless that man is Evander Holyfield. Conversely, a man in a suit might also be overlooked for the trust of public help, because depending on the state of his hair and face, others in public might believe that he thinks it’s 1981. They might not be wrong.

When I was a kid, Halloween was one of the events of the year. The others were my birthday, Christmas, the last day of school, and the first day of Little League. Easter was OK, but I think even then I viewed it as Christmas-lite. Also, rabbits sort of freak me out.

But who could beat Halloween? You dress up, you carry around a bag, strangers put candy in it – whether they want to or not – and you go home and eat it. No catch. Well, in my house the catch was that my dad took something of a house candy tax. It was due upon his inspection of our arrival and the official dumping out ceremony which took place on the kitchen table.

There was nothing like that moment – seeing all of your candy quantified on the kitchen table. Like something out of an adventure movie when the good guys see the treasure the baddies have been going for all along. It glitters in some production lights as they look on in awe.

In 1983, my sisters and I did just that. We dumped out our candy into separate piles with rigidly-guarded borders and we looked on in awe. And then my mother told us that we couldn’t have any.