Friday, December 25, 2009

Day One

Okay, so I kind of get the pear tree.

Ever since we chopped down that crabapple tree back in July, the back yard has felt a little empty. The new pear tree fills that void, and I’m certain its bounty next year will be much tastier than those damn crabapples ever were.

What I don’t get — and maybe, as a Jewish atheist celebrating only my third Christmas, this is just my ignorance of Christmas traditions shining through — is why, sitting halfway up the tree, is that guy who played Keith Partridge on the Partridge Family.

Admittedly, I’m relatively new to the holiday, but please, tell me: What does David Cassidy have to do with Christmas?

He’s been out there all morning, but has yet to move from that one limb. At first, Sonya barked at him, perhaps thinking he was some sort of giant mutant squirrel.1 Thankfully, she settled down after about ten minutes, but she has not left her post beneath the tree, nor let her gaze stray from the middle-aged man oddly perched up there. David/Keith hasn’t said a word, nor did he seem at all interested in the plate of bacon and eggs that we offered him earlier. He just sits there, shivering, locked in a staring contest with the dog.

Denise made some remark this morning about Christmas being 12 days long. That can’t be true, can it? She’s just hazing the new guy, right? There’d better not be another 11 like this one; I know for a fact that nowhere on my wish list did I write, “a plum tree containing Greg Brady.”


1 Or maybe that the mailman had hatched some nefarious new plot to penetrate her inner sanctum.

5 comments:

  1. It's 12 days long theoretically, but David Cassidy is only likely to survive three days if the dog can keep him pinned in that tree. I'll send Leif Garrett over with a ladder.

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  2. Thanks for the offer, but we really don't need any more celebrities in our trees. This is now the third day Cassidy's been up there, and though the dog has since moved on to more interesting quarry, he shows no signs of coming down. I'm starting to think this is some David Blaine-type stunt, except he forgot to notify the media about it...

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  3. Solomon
    I don't know about the first day, nothing crazy happened there but I found, in this order on the other 11 days of Christmas: Two doves in turtle shells, three hens with an odd french accent which is odd for a hen, a bunch of birds on cellphones even though they were right next to each other they were obviously calling each other, a glitchy Sonic game with only 5 rings, geese laying down, 5 girls named swan swimming in a sheet of ice outside my house (this was somewhat odd and disturbing), 8 maids feeding their babies milk (this may have been the weirdest thing yet),10 lords on pogo-sticks (I knew they were lords because they had rather large name tags saying "lord" on them, 11 plumbers making their own pipes, 12 percussionists percussioning (or whatever you call it), and as a grand finally 8 ladies jumped out of the chimney we didn't have and performed a disco. The strangest thing was that on each person their was also a tag containing a strange but intriguing name. Wonder what that means.

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  4. (The ninth got stuck in the fire place)
    Solomon

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    Replies
    1. The ninth always "gets stuck" in the fire place. She doesn't remember all the steps, but doesn't want to admit it to the others, so pretends she's stuck to avoid dancing altogether.

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