i have only the vaguest of memories of this, but the story has been told and re-told so many times that i feel as if i can recall almost every detail exactly.
one year, when my brother and i were very young, my parents almost screwed up Christmas. which, if you know my parents, that, right there, is impossible to believe. but they say it's true.
what happened is, the weekend before Christmas that year, for some reason nobody can remember, the extended family got together and did Christmas early. when the real Christmas Day rolled around, my parents were like a coupla deer caught in the headlights, totally unprepared.
they realized that they hadn't planned anything for Christmas dinner.
nobody was coming over.
no one can seem to remember whether or not we had gifts to open, but mom says she's certain that she and my dad wouldn't have let that lapse, too. but dad's not so sure......he sorta thinks they gave us all our stuff the weekend before. mom says no way would they have done that and dad says maybe they did. i say, if you screwed up everything else, might as well screw up the gifts, too! :)
in any case, what we had stretching before us was a december 25th with zippo, nada. and when you have december 25th stretching before you with zippo, nada, you suddenly realize that of all the days of the year, december 25th is not the one to have zippo, nada.
my dad got on the phone and started calling every restaurant in town. none of them were open. of course none of them were open. this was the late 1950s, people, and the world still had the good sense to close everything on Christmas.
i don't know what my mom was doing while my dad was on the phone, but she was probably cursing under her breath that my dad had let this happen.
as dad finally got off the phone, utterly defeated, a light bulb went off in somebody's head. nobody can remember whose, but i like to think it was mine........
it had snowed like a gazillion buckets of snow - as Christmases past always had the good sense to do - and so somebody (me) said, "let's go sledding!"
and so, we did.
we piled in the car and drove to the local college, wittenberg, and spent the snowy afternoon tumbling and spilling all over its gentle hills.
we were the only ones there.
on the way home, my dad did what he always does - even to this day - when he has a little time to kill......he took a detour and pointed out to us stuff in town that we already knew was there. (even at age 3 or 4 or whatever i was, i knew better than to say, "daaaaaad..........this is bor-ing!")
as we were meandering here and there, we came to "the toddle house restaurant" and saw a lone cop car in the parking lot. a light was on inside.
we went in.
yes, the toddle house was open - i guess somebody's gotta be open, to feed the cops - and so, we took our places behind the counter, next to the cop, and we dined on Christmas Day on cheeseburgers and fries.
which, when you get right down to it, was a perfect way to mark the day that nothing was open for mary and joseph, either. nothing, that is, except a rackety manger that probably had a shaky little toddle of its own.
so, yeah. i learned a lot that Christmas - all of it, important.
and i hope, by reading this story, that you have, too.
