The Christmas Story

This year's Christmas, our first in a foreign country, seemed to arrive unheralded and with meager expectations. It sort of slipped up on us since we were distracted by that whole cross-country road trip/moving to Mexico thing that we did for half the month of December. Living through it without our usual traditions was difficult at the time, but now in retrospect, I realize that each random part of this year's Christmas celebration has a special story all of its own. And everyone knows we love a good story.

I suppose I should begin at the beginning since that seems like the most logical place to start. It all began with an iPod Touch and a shopping experience to remember...

But before this story begins, there's a couple of things you need to know.

First, Chris bought me a smart phone with a U.S./Mexico cross-border plan before we left for Tijuana. Neither of us had ever had a smart phone, and we were super excited about it even if occasionally I did question whether either of us was actually smart enough to operate it. I could tell Chris was disappointed that he too didn't get a cool new phone, so I decided I would get him the next best thing, an iPod Touch, which is like the iPhone except without the phone part, which according to Chris is still really awesome, even though it seems kind of pointless to me. But I knew he wanted it, and since we hadn't exchanged gifts with each other in several years, I was really excited about having something to surprise him with.

The next, and probably most important part of this story, involves my friend T. This is T, and T grew up in Canada. And even though T is now an American citizen, she had never lived in the U.S. for an extended period of time since her husband is in the foreign service. So, T taught me all about Canadian things like maple syrup and socialized health care and when to say "eh," and I taught her about cool American things like Chick-Fil-A and Dollar Tree, where everything is a dollar no matter how awesome it seems. But most importantly, I taught T how to shop on Black Friday.

T and I had spent Thanksgiving afternoon mapping out the sales papers and planning our route through Toys R Us. I was going left to electronics and she was going back to scooters. I had prepped her with all the Black Friday horror stories of people being trampled by angry crowds, and we had practiced our elbow jabs. She understood all that was at stake, and she was prepared.

It was no surprise to her when we arrived at the store and found the line wrapping around the building. This was all just as I had explained. We sized up our opponents as we made our way to the end of the line and took our place. There were at least 200 people ahead of us, and within minutes, hundreds more lined up behind us. "No big deal," we thought as we studied the other shoppers, looking for any signs of weakness. We were confident in our shopping skills.

Completely confident, that is, until we saw Granny in a hot pink jogging suit doing stretches just a few people behind us. First she stretched her arms, and then she stretched her legs. Each move was methodical and determined, and there was no humor to be found on her face. But it was when she started jogging in place and doing boxing air jabs, that we really started to get nervous. We decided right then and there that if Granny got in our way, Granny was going down. We were going to get what we came for, even if we had to use our elbows or our knees or our drop kicks.

Luckily for Granny, she never got in my or T's way that day. I saw her later as I was waiting in line to buy Chris's precious iPod Touch. She was pushing a shopping cart piled to overflowing, and she was still just as serious. She looked mean, and I was glad that she hadn't wanted an iPod Touch, or else this story might be ending with how I got beat down by an old lady in Toys R Us.

So, I got Chris's iTouch that day and I even managed to keep it a secret until Christmas morning, which was hard for me because I really, really, really like to give gifts and see the reactions of the recipients. I smuggled it in my underwear (in my suitcase and not in my pants, just to clarify) all the way across the U.S., and Chris never had a clue that something so awesome was stashed away in our "junk." I bet he's glad now he didn't leave that bag on the side of the road.

As you can see, it didn't take T long to figure out the whole Black Friday thing

Chris with his new iPod Touch

* I've been waiting to write this blog since the writing of it would have blown my Christmas surprise, and now that I've written it, I've realized the rest of my Christmas stories will have to wait for the next blog. Hopefully, I'll get them written before New Year's.  If not, well, everyone loves a Christmas story, even in January.