Right off the bat, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read the Kinston Free Press on Christmas Day. Those of you who subscribe to the paper or purchase it from a vending machine should be applauded for your desire to keep up on current events.
Even if you chose to steal this paper from your neighbor’s yard for the coupons, we appreciate that you like us enough to commit a misdemeanor.
On Sunday, Tax Deduction No. 2 was having trouble getting out of character after a three-week run as Travis Bickle in a local production of “Taxi Driver,” so I put her in the car and headed west to finish some shopping.
While I was busy removing cigarettes and incendiary devices from TD No. 2’s coat pockets, The Wife made a request:
“Don’t let her go to sleep in the car,” she said. “It’ll mess up her nap this afternoon.”
Within seconds, the hum of the tires rolling down the road reset TD No. 2’s disposition to a more acceptable level. As we drove through La Grange, we stopped and spoke to Paulette Burroughs as she picked up cans alongside the highway.
“How do ya like my new orange jumpsuit?” Paulette said with her usual good humor. “This sure is some good community service weather, ain’t it?”
As Paulette stretched out on the hood of my car to take a breather, she started talking about the gifts she’d purchased for her grandchildren. This discussion sparked a few fond Christmas memories of my own.
I recalled the Christmas morning when I put a series of James Brown and Van Halen tapes in my sister’s brand new “Teddy Ruxpin” talking bear. There is nothing more awesome than watching a toy bear belt out “Papa Don’t Take No Mess” while his mechanical eyes that were built to handle slow, gentle tempos roll right out of his head and down the hall.
I became so preoccupied with remembering Christmases gone by that I forgot Paulette was laying on my car when I drove off. For a minute, I was confused by the strange site of a person shoulder-rolling down U.S. 70 at an alarming rate of speed.
Realizing my error, I drove back to see if Paulette was OK. She was skint up pretty bad and had landed in the middle of a fire ant hill. Luckily, the fumes from her “medicine thermos” killed most of the ants and caused the rest to start looking for a Jimmy Buffet concert.
I eventually made it to a book store in Goldsboro. For any readers below the age of 15, a book store is a building filled with books, periodicals and $9 cups of coffee. They’re trying to integrate with Kindle’s and Nooks, but within five years, book stores will be relegated to the same remote island where VHS tapes, the record industry, film-based cameras and Joey Lawrence now reside.
As usual, the tempestuous toddler turned on the charm for total strangers. The writhing yelps of anguish we’d experienced all morning were replaced with dimples and delightful cries of “Hey!” to every person within earshot of a hammerhead fruit bat.
This is the same entity that 20 minutes earlier started screaming “Help!, Help!” in the parking lot when I leaned down to tie her shoe. It only took another 20 minutes to convince the responding officer that this was, in fact, my child.
On the way home she started to dose off. I reached back and tickled her knee, which woke her up for a minute or so before she started to nod off again. I rolled the window down to let in a cold blast of air, which — if anything — seemed to make her more comfortable. A few Cheerios bought a few more minutes, but the Sandman and I were definitely arm-wrestling for her mortal soul.
TD No. 1 had attended a wedding Friday night and had left her silver dress shoes in the front seat. In an act of desperation, I handed the shoe to her little sister, thinking the strings and bows would occupy her for a few more minutes.
Instead of playing with the shoe laces, she buried her face in the shoe as if it were an antihistamine.
“That’s so good!” she exclaimed as she came up for air.
“It’s not a flower, sweetie!” I said as she pulled the shoe back up to her face as if it were her only source of oxygen.
Since the shoes had only been worn once, I figured there wasn’t anything too horrifying living in them yet. The idiots around me on the highway were threatening to cause a 10-car pile-up anyway, so I decided it would be easier to explain a case of athletes face to a pediatrician than to have an accident, so I let her inhale away.
Of course, at the next stoplight, someone who knows me from the paper rolled down their window to alert me that the child in the back of my car was asleep face down in a shoe.
“Thanks for reading The Free Press!” was the only reply I could come up with.
On the way home, I started thinking about past Christmases again. I remembered my friend Prozac calling me up one Christmas asking for help decorating his tree. I drove over to find him standing with a needle and string, cursing to himself under his breath. He’d apparently been having trouble stringing up popcorn to put on the tree.
I walked over and checked out the needle; it was fine. The string seemed strong enough for the job. A few seconds later I suggested it may make his job easier if he were to pop the popcorn before trying to string it up.
It wasn’t exactly a Christmas miracle, but it did give me something I could hold over him for years to come.
Merry Christmas.
Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase Jon’s book “Making Gravy in Public” at the Free Press office and at jondawson.com.