Chapter 65: Christmas

Saturday, December 25, 1982

We got up bright and early for Christmas morning. Of course, as bright and early as we were, Mom and Dad had us beat, if not by much. Since we always wore PJs while opening presents, we didn’t even have to emphasize Angie needing to go to her own room to change. Not that Mom (or even Dad) missed it, but by now ... well. I wouldn’t say that no one cared, but it’d be closing the barn door when the horse was many counties away.

I didn’t think Mom really even wanted to close it, anyway, not when we were behaving. And we were behaving. If we weren’t — close it, bar it, all that, most likely. But, behaving? The joy of seeing her two kids being the very closest of friends overwhelmed anything else, especially with what it’d taken her and Dad to get each of us.

We settled around the tree, with Ang and me delegated to hand out the presents. As a family, we were slowly moving towards the model my ex-wife and I had chosen. We de-emphasized the usual somewhat meaningless presents for ourselves and for friends. For the kids, there would be presents (of course!) at Christmas. For ourselves? One or two items, either carefully chosen or something we knew the other would like and would’ve gotten anyway.

Not that we were fully there yet, but we were far away from the sort of family who’d count presents and get miffed if there weren’t enough, or someone got more than someone else, or ... whatever.

Ang and I got Dad a nice emergency kit for his car. He had one, but the one we’d found was better, both in content and in organization. It’d easily fit in his trunk and, with it, he’d be ready for most anything. Since he spent so much time in the car, it was nearly perfect.

Mom’s present was on the same theme. We got her a beaded seat cover that’d be nice for her back. Dad wouldn’t have wanted it, and Mom would’ve waved off the emergency kit since she drove so much less.

Ang got me a nice shirt, and I got her a necklace that I knew she liked. Another shirt came from Mom and Dad, as did a top and some jeans for Ang.

That wasn’t it, of course. Everyone got at least one book, Ang and I both got cassettes (with music we didn’t already have, too!), and Dad bought the family an RCA SelectaVision VCR. At least he hadn’t fallen for Betamax. Yes, the technology was better, but (unless this universe was very different, indeed) it was going to fail all the same.

We were a bit late to the party — more and more people that I knew had VCRs by this point — but that was okay. We watched less TV this go-round than we had the first, replaced with more reading and more of what would come to be known as ‘quality time’. Oh, Mom and Dad had their shows, and so did Ang and I, but not like we had before. Still, a VCR combined with video-rental stores would give Angie and me a great excuse to watch movies we could not otherwise reasonably claim to have seen.

Of course, I was enlisted to hook the whole thing up, which I did. Dad was thrilled when it worked, even though he hadn’t actually bought any movies. That was okay; while there weren’t that many rental stores yet, there were enough.

After we’d finished with presents, we had breakfast, then got changed and headed for church. Christmas was, of course, a very traditional service. No surprises, not at our church, and I liked that.

Dad surprised us again with brunch at The Warwick. A nagging memory said that this was not the first time the four of us had been there, but it was before I’d gotten here. Angie knew of the difference, of course, and looked quietly amused.

The food was as good as always, and we had a great time. We really were a close-knit family, but Angie and I were both high achievers with lots of demands on our time. We could’ve been closer-knit, I knew, and outings like this were one way to help with that.

On the other hand, we were closer this time than our first go-rounds. Angie had been sidetracked by all of her own issues, and Iceberg Steve hadn’t helped matters at all. Meanwhile, on my first go-round, I was still a high achiever, but without the maturity to know how much family mattered. Oh, I’d been ... okay ... but this was better.

I had no idea what we’d do about a family vacation this year. If Ang or I went to Nationals it might not happen, or possibly just barely happen, A week or two off school, then Nationals, then a week (I was pretty sure) then Northwestern. Maybe we’d go up north right away, or maybe we’d take a short trip like we had the year before.

Nationals were going to be in Missouri. Unfortunately, they were going to be in the Kansas City area, which wasn’t a big help in making vacation plans. Perhaps an asymmetrical car rental, either going from up north to Kansas City or vice versa?

Much too soon to know, and I certainly wasn’t ready to count those chickens before they hatched.

At home, we kept family time going with board games. I think Ang and I surprised Mom and Dad by wanting to play. They’d figured we’d go off and do our own thing.

Instead, we played the classics: ‘Sorry’, ‘Life’, and ‘Monopoly’. The ‘Monopoly’ game got silly in the way ‘Monopoly’ usually does: lots of money, no one really getting enough of an advantage, and everything moving along slowly. Eventually, we decided to just count up the money and (no surprise to me) Angie was the winner.

As the winner, she got to pick what we did next, and she decided to repeat two years ago. She fetched her keyboard and we all sang carols for an hour. First-life me would’ve done nearly anything to avoid that, but then he couldn’t sing, and he would’ve found it a waste of time. Instead, he’d have probably gone off and played computer games, which this me mostly found a waste of time.

Not that time isn’t for wasting, sometimes. All work and no play makes Jack get the axe, after all. I still enjoyed computer games, but had a far better sense of priorities this time. Or, at least, I liked to believe that I did.

Sunday, December 26, 1982

Yes, we went to church. Again. Three days in a row!

Even more amazingly, neither Ang nor I were annoyed. That probably should have been a clue to Mom and Dad that something was just plain off with us. Perhaps we’d lulled them into complacency.

The afternoon plans tested that for me. Not for Ang, though it would forever after.

Dad wanted to go see a movie as a family, which I could get behind. The problem was: which movie? There were several good movies out right now, ones that I should probably take Jas to. ‘Tootsie’, for instance, or ‘Gandhi’, or ‘The Dark Crystal’, a somewhat nerdy favorite of mine. Maybe in San Antonio? That might be a nice double date.

But Dad, being Dad, wanted to see a movie that I knew was horrible. The problem for him was, this would be the second time in a row that his preferences about the same actor would get him burned.

See, Dad was a fan of Peter Sellers, particularly the comic Peter Sellers of the ‘Pink Panther’ films. I like many of those myself, and I could still enjoy them even through a 2020s lens in which some performances were ... regrettable.

The first time Dad got burned was in 1979. We’d gone to see ‘Being There’ (yes, both go-rounds). Dad had walked out unhappy, even upset. I got it — he’d expected a slapstick comedy, and ‘Being There’ is not that — but it’s also one of Sellers’ greatest roles and a terrific movie.

Dad agreed ... later. For whatever reason, he’d watched it on cable, once we’d gotten cable, and ... he loved it. Loved it. It became one of his all-time favorite films. Time, distance, and simply not expecting slapstick transformed it for him.

Now would be part two of the Sellers disappointments, and there would be no happy reconciliation to come for this downer. In 1982, Blake Edwards released what I would charitably call a cash grab, using old footage of Sellers, a body double, and a weak plot. It was called ‘Trail of the Pink Panther’, and ... well. The best moments of the film were the reused footage. Once the film ran out of that, and tried to do anything else, it was pretty much a disaster.

Of course, I couldn’t possibly tell Dad that I’d seen it and knew just what a wretched collection of scum and villainy it represented. We’d just have to experience it.

So, we did. Ang and I sat together and held hands. A few times she squeezed painfully at a particularly awful moment.

Dad and Mom just watched. Mom wasn’t the biggest Pink Panther fan in the world in the first place, but she more-or-less enjoyed the others. She wasn’t enjoying this. And Dad ... he enjoyed the old footage, at least. It’s not good when a comedy generates no laughs for the second half of the movie, and that was pretty much what happened.

We emerged, still blinking at the lights, to Dad saying, “Well, that was awful! And disrespectful! I had hoped for better!”