Christmas Eve. Wow, what's not to love about Christmas eve? Literally as I sit here, about every 12 minutes, the boys wander out of their bedrooms mumble something I assume is a low-level conspiracy between each other as to WHY they can't sleep and making sure the story is straight before they make their ever-so-convincing 'confused why we can't go to sleep'-look, while quickly perusing the room to see if HE has come yet. And each time they meander out, they look more and more like a yuletide version of "Attack of the Zombies" with each passing hour.

"But dad, ..I...(looking frantically)...was wondering if...(looking, looking, looking) you wanted me to re-wrap any of my gifts?", said the oldest, barely able to keep a straight face with his faux sincerity. "Naw, man. I can live with the 'one layer of paper and 5,000 wraps of the scotch tape'-thing you've got going on here." "Well in that case,...how's about I just sit here and, you know....just wait with you...since you are ... all up (colossal yawn)...and everything?", now blinking wildly through yawn tears.

"Go. To. Bed."

Now I know Santa knows who's been bad and good all year. But that doesn't stop some last minute politicking. Deadline additions to The List are not uncommon. We all did it. Toys that have been pined over for months are quickly sidelined in favor of a gizmo with a flashy ad campaign. Parents scramble to find that bicycle/cabbage patch/iPod/Elmo. Kids ask for it because, well it's Santa and I HAVE been good all year. The Santa envelope gets pushed just a little further each year. The really wacky stuff gets asked for, not because it is truly desired, but rather as a measure of just HOW good, was I? Seems to make sense...

I had the incredible good luck to have a cousin post a bunch of photos of some Christmases we had as kids. It put back into focus some fuzzy memories of kids chasing each other, gigantic meals, modest yet ethereal times when getting a single toy that required batteries was a HUGE haul. And a Christmas tree adorned with those perfect ornaments that in clinically-exceptional form, caused sheer delight by just pulling them from their packaging and placing them on a lop-sided evergreen. Photos of bad haircuts, wide bell bottoms and even wider collars were a wonderful delight. The grainy visions of gingerbread houses past, what with the partially missing Fruit Strip sidewalks, transported me back. Back to a time when the grandparents made that 2-day drive to come see us. And it was enormously special. The greatest things in the world would all convene and would be exponentially be better because of it. Grandma would pour over Christmas treats. Christmas dinner would be made that perfect way. Even between meal snacking was... encouraged!!

Of course the person in charge of making Christmas wonderful was my mom. Nothing unusual about that. Lots and lots of moms make sure that if there is one day out of the year their kiddo is going to have a fantastic day, it'll be Christmas. But from my earliest days, it really wasn't about how much, or how big. It became a measure of how SPECIAL. Never was the true meaning of Christmas lost. Each year we'd break out the Bible, and read the Christmas story before opening any gifts. But in addition to that, we'd have the house decorated and it was always a real tree that we hung tinsel from. After all Christmas had to SMELL like Christmas as much as look and taste like the season.

Probably the youngest Christmas I recall was a trip to the Canadian Rockies and a visit to Radium Hot Springs. Half the family is Canadian, so it was a perfect spot to gather. I was about 5 or 6, and this was a big deal. We were all crammed into a freezing cabin and as I recall, all the beds were twin size. The mattress was ideal...if one had scholiosis. I remember having the mixed blessing of having to rack with grandpa. Mixed in that grandpa snored. Not 'make a little rumble' snoring. Snored like he was trying to suck down a tube sock through his right nostril, with a jackhammer in his left. That year he gave me a prized and high appreciated gift: my first fishing rod. I thanked him by pee-ing in the bed.

(It was on a subsequent trip like this that Grandpa brought down his Ski-doo and invited the family for the wintertime fun that was being pulled behind the Ski-doo...on a flipped-over truck hood...in 10 degree weather. Ah yes, regular gas fumes, other-worldly frostbite and a river of snot pouring out my nose while I have a deathclutch on any surface I can get ahold of as we go flying around the frozen lake at about 4000 mph. Good times...)

Of course this is the time of year where a set of tires can be run through just driving back and forth between home, parents, in-laws, and cousins. With each stop is a new 10,000 calorie meal and another iTunes gift card. By Boxing Day, I'm oozing gravy and have a decidedly pinkish hue from all the ham and cranberry jell-o I've ingested. Ironically I wear my adidas training suit to most of these gatherings. I guess it does take a measure of training to get ready for that triple bypass. That elastic waistband does come in handy though.

The skill of gift-giving can pay off during this time of year of course. But there is still the art of 'gift-receiving'. That grin and bear it time when you are handed something so perfectly wrong and yet you can't let on. The year I got a Chicago Bears sweatshirt with an ironed-on 51 and Butkis across the shoulders, was particularly epic in that a) I have no real affinity for a player from what was 20 years previous and b) I didn't ever like the Chicago Bears. The fact that it came from the girlfriend's parents lead me to believe they either didn't listen to a word I said or didn't want me to be the boyfriend any longer. Ultimately they got both.

As a kid, or I should say as a kid who hated school, I was always loathe to pick up the gift that I just knew was...a book. There's books and then there's BOOKS. Nothing says Christmas Happytime like "1001 Incredibly Hard Math Problems that You Have No Chance of Ever Solving, BigBoy"... in hardback. They may as well have given me a Mason jar of baby tears. How does one even fake-smile through that one?

From a purely 'hit it out of the park' stance, there was a gift I got when I was a kid that I truly didn't expect. Partly because it was pricey and partly because I REALLY wanted it. I got my first Nikon and...I...freaked. I'd wanted...no I LUSTED this toy. I knew I could only afford to get a few rolls of film developed, but I also learned quickly that I liked the pictures I took. And to this day, learning the lessons I learned with that camera, I still like the photos I take. I got that camera as a 16 year old. And I got it from Santa. And to this day, you can't tell me he doesn't exist.

Through the years, mom always made a to-do about the gathering of family. Whether it was the Canada crowd and/or the folks from Oklahoma. It was a centerpiece of union. Love and laughter would pour in and for a few days we'd just stop. Stop our frenetic pace, and look around. Be humbled at our blessings. At the top of these Christmases may be the most bittersweet. In 1995, mom had fought about as hard as anyone could have against an opponent that didn't fight fair. We knew it. We also knew we needed that year to be special. Family from near and far came to town. They came because this was her season. The one she had bought special plates for, special trains for, special ornaments, glasswear, clothing. Years and years of making it special for us. We needed to make it special for her.

And we did.



So here I am again on Christmas. Eternally grateful for my blessings which have been as little as a fishing rod and as big as that warm fuzzy feeling sitting next to my family telling stories and waiting on Santa with the boys.

Just kinda wish someone else was here, because I always think about her.


Her smiling,.... barking at me...





"Go. To. Bed."

It's Saturday night and I'm doing what I normally do on Saturday nights. Nothing. Well nothing, and watching rodeo. It appears to very serious business because each of the contestants is wearing the equivalent of a full-body cast BEFORE they ride. Neck and back braces, wrist wraps and even the odd helmet. Someone needs to send these ol' boys a memo and tell them that these animals are BIG.

The band played a wedding this summer for a wonderful couple, the groom of which is a cowboy. Not the OSU variety, but rather the 'fall off a horse/bull/Crazy Arkansas chick variety. This guy and all his buds are that 'no screwing around' tough. Many you could hook up their horse trailer to their chin. Most of the introductions for the evening went like, "Geoff this is Rusty, Rusty..this is Geoff. He's hilarious." Then we'd shake hands and it felt like having my hand in a hydraulic vise. A vise twice the size of mine. Rusty would smile a Skoal-filled crooked yet warm smile, and I would smile in a way that said, "damn I hope I survive this handshake." You see my hands are tough from years of fighting gingivitis. Rusty's hands are tough from years of throwing 800 lb. animals on their ass by twisting their heads around to see their respective now-empty scrotums, for which, Rusty was acutely responsible too. I remember one time twisting MY neck really far too. It was from swinging at a golf ball. Take that, Rusty. Try living with the repercussions of miss clubbing from 175 yards. So I don't wanna hear about getting a finger knotted up in a mis-thrown heeler during a NFR qualifier.

I did learn that it is universally thought that real cowboys, in real Wranglers and clean starched shirts are quite dearly thought of by the fairer sex. No matter which directions their fingers, kneecaps or shoulders go. So maybe there is something to strapping oneself to a giant critter with the brain of a drunken possum.

I remember as a kid meeting Larry Mahan. He was working a booth at the State Fair in his home state of Oregon in about 1971. It was late in the day, his day had been full of glad-handing folks, listening to the same stories of greatness recalled of him from adoring fans, and I'm sure about 3 cans of Copenhagen. Dad saw him, recognized the name and knew that I liked autographs and this would be an opportunity. Larry was essentially alone in the dim light of a hanging light bulb in a fair booth. Now, I didn't know squat about rodeo other than the limited exposure of Wide World of Sports and well, I thought it was super-cool because it showed these ultra-tough guys doing amazing things. And the entirity of their armamentarium was: a hat. A rope, maybe. But a hat for sure. And there was Larry Mahan, then 5-time world Champion, right in front of me. As late in the day as it was, and as hungover as he could have been, when he saw this goofy little 8 year old kid with a bad choice in personal wardrobe, he did as I'm sure he had done a thousand times before that day: he smiled, called me by my freshly-introduced name, and shook my hand with a paw that felt like extra-course grit sandpaper. He engaged my dad on some small talk, mussed my hair and signed "To Geoff, Best Wishes...Larry Mahan". And you know what...when he won that sixth championship in 1973, I read of it in the papers and smiled a big goofy smile. Because my buddy had done it again.

I knew right then that I'm probably not cut out for rodeo. Which is a shame. I tend to think that life's greatest achievements really could be marked not with a piece of paper, e.g. birth certificates, marriage licenses, diplomas, etc., but rather a good belt buckle. Can one imagine the glory, not to mention the sheer mass of the buckle celebrating a new driver's license? Or the utter glory of a college degree? Not to mention boy-girl conquests? Yessir, a buckle the size of a dinner plate is loud, proud and mostly...portable. EVERYONE can see it. Who needs a doctoral sheepskin when you can have something roughly the size of a '58 Buick bumper around one's waist?

But being that rodeo, or pro football, or mixed martial arts championships are out of reach (not for a lack of talent mind you, but I'm pretty sure it would take me out of that 1650 daily caloric intake thing we all live by, right?) then I'd have to draw on my wealth of knowledge from personal experience to whittle down to a list of things I COULD do, eliminating from a set of jobs I HAVE done. I hate to be repetitive.

Therefore, I can remove paper-thrower, having tossed the Washington Post for three years. I hated that job if for no other reason than it set my sleep schedule from 9:15pm to 5:00am...through high school. Oddly, chicks didn't dig my uncontrolled yawning starting at 8:20. For that matter they didn't dig my permed hair, bad glasses, or lack of much socially in general either. The upside was I was awake when the FM stations played the great music that they couldn't play during prime time... Not to mention any time there was a need to be caller 7 to win a contest or new promo album on the radio, it wasn't uncommon that I was caller 2,3,5,6 and 7. "WPGC...you're caller 7...oh, hey Geoff. Yeah, I've got your address right here. 20870 is your zip right?" So in hind sight it was a push.

Next on the list would be yardguy/maintenance man. This involved learning-on-the-fly electrical and plumbing work. It's amazing how mad one can get at one's self when "Be sure you flip the breaker" is ignored. Twice. I learned how to tile and grout. And dry wall. I also learned that I hope to never do that again in my life, and so when these activities present themselves today, I plead ignorance. The upside to that job was learning pool maintenance. In a college town. No, the chemicals probably didn't NEED to be checked every 20 minutes, but when working for your step-dad, one cannot be too careful. I could die in an electrical accident. I wasn't going to die because the pool needed chlorine. Self-preservation, you know.

I worked at Hardee's for two, count 'em two nights. That's NIGHTS. I learned that brown polyester doesn't breathe and it DOES catch fire easily. And when my direct supervisor had "Love" and "Hate" tattoo'ed across her fingers...I knew that I probably wasn't going to be flying up any corporate ladders anytime soon. I learned to be incredibly nice to those in the food service business. They can, and will, jack with your dinner. And not care one bit. I also learned to not order the fried pies. Ever.

Well, with this deep and wide assortment on my resume', I guess rodeoing wouldn't be that bad. After all it's only 8 seconds. And it's not hauling wet carpet out of a flooded apartment, or being yelled 'custom order!!!' by a amphetamine driven line cook, or even walking in the pouring cold rain tossing papers. No, I wouldn't have to get my mind around being thrown 15 feet in the air, and landing on my ear.

Mentally, I would just have to survive shaking hands with 20 'Rustys' every weekend.