The Christmas Rant for 12-24-00The Christmas Rant for December 24, 2000
Season’s greetings everyone. How are all of you on this wonderful Christmas Eve? I’m just fine myself. I’m hard at work over at the golf course. I got a one day notice to work. My boss called me yesterday while I was out. I called him back at around 10pm. So I’m here from 9-4. Awesomeness. Yeah right. I barely got any sleep last night. Probably about a good 5 hours of it. Oh well.
Well Christmas is here already. It seems just like yesterday I was writing the Halloween rant. Actually, it does seem like 2 months ago but anyway. I’m always fond of Christmas. I mean, you get all this cool stuff. People say the enjoy Christmas because they like giving gifts. Bull honkey!!!! They love getting gifts. Everyone does. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love buying gifts for people. I like fooling them as well. I bought my sister the Destiny’s Child CD. I put it in this fairly large box. I also put this 5-7lb weight in the box as well. I did that to her last year. She’ll probably expect it. In fact, I did it to everyone in my family this year. Except for my little brother. I got him a Mega-Armor Wolverine. Yeah buddy. I bought my father I nice PING hat. I bought my mother the new U2 CD. She’s asked me a few times if I have heard anything off the CD besides “Beautiful Day”. So I decided to get the CD for her. I was going to get her some Bath&Body Works stuff but my grandmother bought her a big basket so I decided not to go for the overkill. I bought Sheena Sixteen Candles (the movie, not sixteen actual candles) and a gift card to her most favorite store, Wet Seal. She bought me Buffy:The Watcher’s Guide Vol. 2, a nice little shirt, and some zebra-print boxers. Oh yeah. Well enough with the present, let’s take a look at the past, shall we.
I’m going to reminisce a little here. Though I don’t remember too many Christmases, we still have pictures. I have a picture from when I was one. Curly hair and all. Oh yeah. I was a cutie. Over the years, I got the wonderful toys like a Cozy Coupe, Teddy Rumpskin(sp?), lots of Ghostbuster, COPS, He-Man, and other various cartoon action figures. Back in 1990, Batman was the in-thing. At some point the Ninja Turtles were. Dick Tracy and Robin Hood were pretty cool at one point when the movies came out. Don’t forget those Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers either. Over the years, my gifts made a transition from toys to some sort of electronic device. Such as stereos, computers, N64s. Stuff like that. Last year I received my second Christmas stereo. A nice big AIWA stereo. 3 CD changer, radio, tape, all of that good stuff. This year, I have no idea what I’m receiving. Actually, I do know of one thing. I’m getting the new TOOL CD/DVD. We recently acquired a DVD player so my dad bought that for me. I’m not supposed to know but he basically flat out told me he was getting it. One thing that’s sticking in my mind is a Playstation 2. I have a slight feeling he might have got one but I won’t be surprised I do not get one. Oh well. Enough about gifts.
One Christmas that will always stick out is the Christmas of ’98. The year of the ice storm. It was quite a Christmas. A lot of crazy stuff happened. So here we go. I don’t really remember when our power went out. It was either the day before Christmas Eve or on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve morning, my dad went to Smithville to get a generator from someone he knew. My uncles, Steve and Glen, my sister Renee, and I headed for Murfreesburo to get a kerosene heater from Home Depot. My grandfather gave us his credit card to pay for it. We got there to find out they were out. News hit that some were being shipped from Antioch so we decided to stick around. Taking advantage of my grandfather’s Mastercard, we went to Applebees for lunch. We thought it wouldn’t hurt. We finally got one and headed home to my grandparents who live just two houses down from us. On the way, we had to stop at Albertson’s to get Christmas dinner. Four little chickens, mashed potatoes, and some other stuff. We then went home. We got there to see that my dad had hooked up our microwave and a few lamps to the gas powered generator. Also, we found that everyone was a little “tipsy” due to the fact that they were drinking a little whiskey to keep them warm. They being my grandmother and father, my mother, and my aunt. Later on, my uncles went in the same direction as the others. We warmed up the heater. As soon as we got it going, our power was turned back on. Quite funny I thought. We opened gifts and ate. My dad decided to bring the generator and microwave home in the truck. He drove across my neighbor’s yard and up to our front door. He got out lifting the microwave and slipped on some ice. From the waist up, he landed in grass, waist down was on the sidewalk. I saw the whole thing. It scared me to death. He kind of rolled over on to his stomach and I was saying, “Dad, are you alright? Dad, you ok? Dad?” I knew he was alright because the first thing he said was “Eric, shut-up!!!” He walked inside holding his arm, sat down for a moment, then asked me to help him bring the microwave in. Amazingly, it still worked. He took off his jacket and noticed a lot of blood soaked through his sweatshirt. I nearly passes out. When he slipped, he was holding the microwave. When he landed, the corner of it punctured through 3 layers of clothing and poked a hole in the inside of his elbow. Wonderful. At least it wasn’t broken. He made a nice little sling out of some old sweatpants and walked back over to my grandparents. We thought the night was over but it had only begun.
We finally went home. My dad went to bed for a little bit. My uncle Steve came over to help us unload the truck. Steve and I were in the living room talking and my mom was in the computer room smoking a cigarette. The power all of a sudden went off. My mom walked into the living room, cigarette in hand(that’s how we knew she was coming). Along the way, she ran into the same wall three times. Every time, you could see ashes fall from her cigarette. Funny stuff. Well, we all ventured outside to start the generator. We accidentally left the door open and our dog, Princess, ran out the door. She’s kind of a scared type dog. So she decided to run off. Not cool at all. We gathered a search party which consisted of my mother, my drunk grandmother, and myself. I stayed with my grandmother. We spotted the dog run across the street to the golf course. Well, we then decided to go after her. So at about 11pm Christmas Eve, the three of us were roaming around on the 17th hole yelling for Princess. My mother and I were a little bit ahead of my grandmother. All of a sudden we hear a thud and some laughing. We look behind us to see my grandmother lying on the ground after she had slipped down a little hill. Sweet lord it was funny once we realized she was okay. Her drunkess kept it from hurting. I walked her home after an unsuccessful search. My mother and I went inside the house to my crying sister. Renee was really close to Princess. My mom decided to set some dog food outside on the front porch along with a candle. As she was about to walk inside, she heard a clicking. She turned around to see Princess coming around the corner on the sidewalk. It was one of the magical moments. Awwwww, I’m all teared up right now. Not really. We all had to sleep in the living room because that was where the heat was. My mom, David, and Renee slept on the floor, I got the couch, and my dad got the recliner. We woke up on Christmas morning and we had to turn the generator on because it was freaking freezing in the house. It took us a while but we finally got it started. Shortly thereafter, the power came on again. It was nice. Throughout the day, the power flickered but didn’t stay off for too long. It will be a Christmas I probably never forget. It brought our family closer together or something like that. It’ll be a story I’ll tell my grandkids.
Well, this has been my Christmas story. If you have any memories and you’re bored enough to share them, send them to me at either erickeith@hotmail.com or dailyrant@dailyrant.20m.com . I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I’m taking the week off from the website(Heh, like I already haven’t.) The next issue will be the Year-End/Year Anniversary of the Daily Rant. Some of you hardcore Daily Rant fans remember that I started the Rant by sending it by email. 7 months later, I decided to put it in website form. Oh well, I’ll have to do something special for that. Until then, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Merry Christmas from the Daily Rant!!!!!!
Lyric of the Rant
“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town!!!!”
“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”-Traditional Christmas Song
