Yesterday was our family’s Christmas gathering. They’re much more fun now than they were five or ten years ago because there’s a new generation of kiddies running around. (I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but I’ve got five first cousins that lived within a few blocks of me growing up, so they’ve historically served as demi-siblings. And they’ve been spouting out kids like a water fountain the last few years.)

It’s nice to see all my old toys — the Star Wars stormtrooper, the giraffe stuck in a tiny little cage (PETA Alert!), the Tonka jeep — getting some use again. If you guys are lucky (I mean, really lucky), I might post some pictures of my cousin’s kid Cody, who a recent Rand Corp. study determined to be the Cutest Kid in the Western World. (Reports of a slightly cuter kid in rural Mongolia could not be confirmed by researchers; personally I give them little credence.) Cody also has impeccable taste; when it came time for him to invent an imaginary friend, he sensibly named him Josh. A wise, wise boy.

My grandmother, as much as I love her, showed questionable gift taste: an ironing board. She told me she’d been meaning to get me one for a while because I needed one. My first thought: what kind of an insult is this? I look so damned wrinkly that I obviously need holiday help? My second thought: I have an ironing board. Sometimes I even use it. Did she know this? Was my ironing board somehow inadequate? Was the symbolic import of the gift so critical that it made my sudden two-ironing-board setup acceptable?

Anyway, today she sheepishly asked: “Wait, you already have an ironing board, don’t you?” I admitted that, yes, I did. Maybe I could try ironing in stereo or something.

24 December 2001

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