Tuesday, December 20, 2005
'Tis The Season........
Don't you just love those "holiday update letters" that so many people like to enclose with their Christmas cards? I'm not talking about those that are unique and funny, like the one we got from Cultural Infidel's seventeen cats a couple of days ago. That one was cool, at least until we see CI on the evening news in a straightjacket as deputies haul all those cats out of his house and reporters interview his neighbors: "He was a quiet man, just kept to himself. We had no idea......"
But mostly, holiday letters make me want to track down the writer and beat him senseless with a bough of holly. Why is it that the only people who write those things are the ones whose children are monumental success stories?
Little Billy graduated first in his class at Harvard Law, earned his first million by July, and polls have him in the lead in his bid for a Senate seat!
Bobby is now a neo-natal surgeon, has saved eight babies since Thanksgiving alone, and his supermodel wife is on the cover of "Elle"!
James and his wife just finished their doctorates in theology and are now running a mission in Zaire. Their daughter is studying music in Paris. God loves them much more than your children.
Where are all the letters from the people whose kids are somewhat less than perfect? Where are the letters from parents with whom the rest of us can identify?
Little Tommy is hoping to make parole this time around. We're getting his room ready, just in case. We hate that our house is going on to the sex offender list, but he's got no place else to go.
Sara is just about weaned off the Wild Turkey down at the County Hospital and hopes to rejoin the circus next month in Fargo.
Johnny only has $1,200 left to pay on all those traffic fines and hopes to get his license back by Christmas '07.
I'd like to see a couple of those cards wedged in between the ones with pictures of people's dogs wearing Santa hats.
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But mostly, holiday letters make me want to track down the writer and beat him senseless with a bough of holly. Why is it that the only people who write those things are the ones whose children are monumental success stories?
Little Billy graduated first in his class at Harvard Law, earned his first million by July, and polls have him in the lead in his bid for a Senate seat!
Bobby is now a neo-natal surgeon, has saved eight babies since Thanksgiving alone, and his supermodel wife is on the cover of "Elle"!
James and his wife just finished their doctorates in theology and are now running a mission in Zaire. Their daughter is studying music in Paris. God loves them much more than your children.
Where are all the letters from the people whose kids are somewhat less than perfect? Where are the letters from parents with whom the rest of us can identify?
Little Tommy is hoping to make parole this time around. We're getting his room ready, just in case. We hate that our house is going on to the sex offender list, but he's got no place else to go.
Sara is just about weaned off the Wild Turkey down at the County Hospital and hopes to rejoin the circus next month in Fargo.
Johnny only has $1,200 left to pay on all those traffic fines and hopes to get his license back by Christmas '07.
I'd like to see a couple of those cards wedged in between the ones with pictures of people's dogs wearing Santa hats.
