The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas

The year I learned that Christmas did not, in fact, originate as a celebration of my amazing ability to temporarily transform into a "good" child for a few weeks was the year my grandparents took me to see their church's nativity play.  My dad's parents were heavily involved in their church and felt that, at six years old, it was time that I start appreciating the miracle of Jesus instead of using Christmas as an excuse to whore out my integrity for presents.  Even though my parents weren't religious, they let me go to the play because it was important to my grandparents.

From my grandparents' flowery explanation and frequent use of the word "miracle," I went in expecting to be blown away by the production. Unfortunately, the church moms and the pathetic excuses for actors that they called their offspring failed to bring the characters to life in the way I had hoped.  And the story just seemed to center around everyone being really impressed with Jesus and there wasn't much suspense and not a single battle scene.

I could see that the story had potential, but I was deeply disappointed by the whole experience.

By the time my grandparents dropped me off at home, I had convinced myself that I needed to take matters into my own hands and reinvent the birth of Christ so that it conformed to my expectations. My parents and I lived with my maternal grandmother and my aunt, so I would have more than enough talent to work with - all I had to do was create a compelling story line.

I walked through my front door with purpose and gathered my family members in the living room to tell them about my vision. I was going to rewrite the birth of Jesus Christ and I was going to make it POP.

My mom, always wanting to nurture my creative side, agreed on behalf of everyone that we should go forward with the production. I would be playing the part of Mary and my dad would be Joseph. My aunt and my grandma would play the wise men. My mom would be filming. The dogs were slated to play the animals in the manger, but they kept trying to chew the eyes off of the doll I'd chosen to play Jesus, so their parts were cut and they were relegated to the bedroom for the duration of the production.

Once I had assigned everyone their parts, we set about the task of gathering costumes and props. Joseph was outfitted in a brown bath robe and Mary wore a blue blanket over her head like a cloak. The wise men, who were heavily intoxicated at that point in the evening, decided to dress themselves like gypsies.

I felt that the struggles of my character, Mary, needed to be emphasized. The audience really needed to understand that she was suffering. I constructed my costume accordingly.

By the time I was done reinventing her, Mary carried a cane, walked with an exaggerated limp and was completely covered in BandAids.

She was also blind.

The first scene opened with Mary and Joseph walking across the desert in search of shelter. I took my dad's hand and slowly paraded around the house, making a big show of being horribly disabled.

I was slightly annoyed when my dad broke character to ask my mom if she put the leftovers in the refrigerator, but I tried to work around the interruption and carry on. I couldn't let myself be distracted by the incompetence of others.

I had never been more serious about anything in my little life.  I ad-libbed my lines with the greatest sincerity, pausing after each one to let the weight of my plight sink in.

Every now and then, I would pause my dramatic musings and make my dad knock on a door and ask "Is there room at the inn?" At which point, my mother's disembodied voice would say "I'm sorry. There is no room at the inn." And then I'd make my dad feign complete outrage at the detached voice.

Me: "Now yell at the innkeeper!"

My Dad: "Arrggghhhh!"

Me: "No, Dad! Actually yell words at him!"

My Dad: "You... innkeeper! You dirty innkeeper!"

Me: "Do it better than that."

My Dad: "Oh, I'll... I'll show you, you rascally innkeeper!"

Me: "NO! You aren't saying it mean enough."

My Dad: "How do I say it mean enough?"

Me: "Say 'I'll rip out your guts and feed them to a monster and then I'll kill you!'"

My Dad: "I'll rip out your guts and feed them to a monster and then I'll kill you."

Me: "Louder."

My Dad: "I'LL RIP OUT YOUR GUTS AND FEED THEM TO A MONSTER AND THEN I'LL KILL YOU!!!"

Working with my family was turning out to be more of a struggle than I had anticipated.  They seemed to be actually looking for opportunities to derail my theatrical masterpiece.

Once we had cycled through knocking on every door in the house in much the same fashion, I went back to the first door and started the process over. At some point in this endless litany of repetitive scenes, my mom interrupted to try to get things moving a little faster.

My mother didn't seem to understand how serious I was about my part.  Fortunately, I got bored with the scene well before I'd gotten around to reenacting it a million times.

It was finally time for Jesus to be born. Due to my incomplete understanding of childbirth, the scene involved Jesus being tossed across the room, as if in flight, and me running over to where he landed and acting really surprised to find him there.

The wise men were in the kitchen making more cocktails while Jesus was being "born" and they missed their cue. My mom ran into the kitchen and yelled "Jesus is here!" to which the wise men responded "Oh! Right! Shit. Hang in there, Jesus! We're coming!! "

They stumbled into the living room, still clutching half-full glasses of vodka which they hadn't had time to pour orange juice into, and yelled, as if the baby Jesus were partially deaf or mentally challenged "HELLO JESUS. WE COME BEARING GIFTS."

Grandma: "Wait, where are the gifts?"

Aunt: "Didn't you bring them? We were supposed to bring gold, frankincense and that other one." 

Grandma: "I thought you were going to bring them."

Aunt: "I was busy keeping my eye on that star and trying not to get us lost. You were on gold, frankincense and whatever duty."

Grandma: "Well, I was brushing the camels."

Aunt: "You aren't supposed to brush camels." 

Grandma: "You don't know that. Have you ever owned a camel?"

Aunt: "Of course. I'm a wise man. I know all there is to know about camels."

Grandma: "Well, then you should know that camels need to be brushed. A lot."

Aunt: (skeptical silence).

Grandma: "Well, I guess we don't have any gifts after all. Sorry Jesus."

I was not happy. I ordered them to go find some gifts for Jesus.

They scavenged around the living room for a few minutes and then returned bearing a pack of cigarettes, the remote control and a Kenny Loggins tape.

Aunt: "We're back! And we have the gifts!"

Grandma: "They are specially imported from distant lands."

The gifts were most definitely not imported from distant lands. I had just seen my aunt and grandmother pick them up off of the floor, seemingly at random.  Their inattention to detail infuriated me. They weren't even trying to make the play seem realistic.  They were sabotaging my monumental production with their lazy, unrealistic props.

Me: "Jesus doesn't want those things."

Grandma: "Sure he does. Jesus loves Kenny Loggins."

Me: "No. He hates him."

My dire seriousness only served to fuel their desire to toy with me.

Aunt: "No, no, no. Jesus was a huge Kenny Loggins fan."

Grandma: "It's true. I saw it in the Bible once."

Me: "Grandma, Kenny Loggins wasn't even alive back then."

Grandma: "Oh yes he was.  Kenny Loggins is immortal."

They both burst into raucous laughter.  They thought they were being awfully clever.  Apparently my mom and dad thought so too, because they joined in.

At that point, they were all laughing too hard to clearly impart any further knowledge of Kenny Loggins.

I looked at them, strewn about the room; contorted with laughter over their own stupid jokes.

They were a disgrace.  They had somehow managed to take my moment in the spotlight and irreversibly derail it until it was entirely about Kenny Loggins. This was supposed to be MY moment, not Kenny Loggins' moment. It was so unfair. They were ruining my life.

I couldn't contain my fury any longer.

An unforeseen plot twist arose when, in a final attempt to jar my family into cooperation, I cast the baby Jesus to the ground and began to repeatedly bludgeon him with my cane.

Even though they weren't religious, the violent blasphemy unfolding before them made my family feel slightly uncomfortable.

My grandmother tried to intervene. 

For a moment, it seemed as though my outburst had succeeded in bringing my family back into a more serious mindset. But after a few moments of tense silence, my aunt quietly squeaked "Kenny Loggins wouldn't beat the baby Jesus..."

It was over.  Any hope I had ever had of getting my family members to act out their parts with integrity was shattered.  They laughed and laughed until I thought they were going to asphyxiate on their own wretched spittle.

My mom eventually realized that it was her maternal duty to step in and discipline me when I did things like strike the baby Jesus repeatedly with a blunt object, so she tried to pull herself together and send me to my room. 

I didn't want to spend any more time around these horrible, undignified people anyway, so I stomped away to my room where I could reenact the play with a more cooperative cast.

I still hold a small amount of resentment toward Kenny Loggins.  

Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving

Packing all of your belongings into a U-Haul and then transporting them across several states is nearly as stressful and futile as trying to run away from lava in swim fins.  

I know this because my boyfriend Duncan and I moved from Montana to Oregon last month.  But as harrowing as the move was for us, it was nothing compared to the confusion and insecurity our two dogs had to endure.  

Our first dog is - to put it delicately - simple-minded.  Our other dog is a neurotic German shepherd mix with agonizingly low self-esteem who has taken on the role of "helper dog" for our simple dog.  Neither dog is well-equipped with coping mechanisms of any kind.  

When we started packing, the helper dog knew immediately that something was going on.  I could tell that she knew because she becomes extremely melodramatic when faced with even a trivial amount of uncertainty.  She started following me everywhere, pausing every so often to flop to the ground in an exaggeratedly morose fashion - because maybe that would make me realize how selfish I was being by continuing to pack despite her obvious emotional discomfort.     

When the soul-penetrating pathos she was beaming at me failed to prevent me from continuing to put things in boxes, the helper dog became increasingly alarmed.  Over the ensuing few days, she slowly descended into psychological chaos.  The simple dog remained unfazed. 

Unfortunately for the helper dog, it took us nearly a week to get everything packed up.  By the time we were ready to begin the first part of our two-day journey to Oregon, she seemed almost entirely convinced that she was going to die at any moment.  She spent the entire car ride drooling and shaking uncontrollably.  

But the simple dog seemed to enjoy the trip. 

Even though she threw up seven times. 

She actually seemed to like throwing up.  To the simple dog, throwing up was like some magical power that she never knew she possessed - the ability to create infinite food.  I was less excited about the discovery because it turned my dog into a horrible, vomit-making perpetual motion machine.  Whenever I heard her retch in the backseat, I had to pull over as quickly as possible to prevent her from reloading her stomach and starting the whole cycle over again.  

But as far as the simple dog was concerned, it was the best, most exciting day of her life.  

It wasn't until we stopped for the night in Umatilla that the simple dog became aware that there was any reason for her to feel anxious.  But at around two o'clock in the morning, the simple dog finally realized that something was different and maybe she should be alarmed.

This particular dog is not anywhere near the gifted spectrum when it comes to solving problems.  In fact, she has only one discernible method of problem solving and it isn't even really a method. 

But making high-pitched noises won't solve your problem if your problem is a complete inability to cope with change.  Unfortunately for everyone involved, the simple dog did not understand this concept and she went right ahead and made an interminable amount of noise that was just invasive enough to make sleeping impossible. 

After an hour of failed attempts at comforting the simple dog, her constant, high-pitched emergency-distress-signal became a huge problem.  

I tried to communicate my displeasure to the simple dog, but communicating with the simple dog usually goes like this:

She was going to make that sound forever if she felt it was necessary.  We tried everything from spooning her to locking her in the bathroom, but none of it was even the slightest bit effective.  

The simple dog made the noise all through the night and was still going strong the next morning. When we were loading the dogs into the car, the constant, high-pitched sound emanating from the simple dog finally broke the helper dog.  The helper dog wailed in anguish, which alarmed the simple dog.  In her surprise, the simple dog let out a yelp, which further upset the helper dog.  And so it continued in a wretched positive-feedback loop of completely unnecessary noise.

When we finally arrived at our new house, the dogs had calmed down considerably.  Unfortunately, it had snowed the night before and there was still snow on our front lawn, and that was enough to catapult both dogs back into hysteria.  

The simple dog had either never experienced snow or she'd forgotten that she knew what it was, because when we let her out of the car, she walked around normally for about seven seconds, then she noticed the snow and her feeble little mind short-circuited.

At first, the simple dog was excited about the snow.  She started prancing around the yard like she was the star of a one-dog parade - her recent personal crisis overshadowed by a haze of enthusiasm. 

The prancing turned to leaping and the leaping turned to running chaotically in stupid little circles. Then she just stopped and stared at the ground.  There was a visible shift in her demeanor as she realized that she didn't understand snow and it was everywhere and she should probably be scared of it. She started making the noise again. 

Not surprisingly, the helper dog interpreted the snow as a sign of her imminent demise.  But she was so exhausted from worrying about all of the other signs of her demise that she just gave up and accepted her death.  She peered up at us, half-buried in the snow.  Her eyes were filled with pain and helplessness, as if she thought we had summoned the snow for the sole purpose of making her sad.

We decided that it would probably be best to bring the dogs inside.  

As a condition for allowing us to have dogs in our rental house, our landlady made us promise that we wouldn't let the dogs scratch the wood floors.  We didn't anticipate it being a problem because it hadn't been in the past, but as soon as our dogs set foot in the house, they morphed into perfectly engineered floor-destroying machines.  They started sprinting as fast as they could for absolutely no reason - skittering around in circles to avoid running into the walls.  

We finally corralled them in the bedroom and shut the door to give ourselves a little time to regroup and come up with a plan.  Until we could get some rugs or convince the dogs that it was unnecessary to sprint around chaotically for no reason, we would need to find some way to prevent them from scratching the floors.  What we ended up doing was going to the pet store and buying two sets of sled dog booties. It was the only way.

It is easy to imagine that a dog who has recently experienced a dramatic upheaval of its formerly safe and predictable life might not react well to suddenly having strange objects attached to all four of its feet.  This was most definitely the case with the booties.

The helper dog panicked and started trying to rip the booties off with her teeth. 

I scolded her and she reacted as if I'd ruined her entire life. 

But at least her immobilizing self-pity kept her from chewing the booties off.

The simple dog just stood there and looked at me in a way that would suggest she didn't realize her legs still worked.

They had to wear the booties for two days.  Those two days were filled with the most concentrated display of overemotional suffering I have ever witnessed.  The simple dog spent most of her time standing in the middle of the room looking bewildered and hurt and the helper dog refused to walk, instead opting to flop her way around the house like a dying fish.  

The entire ordeal was punctuated by the simple dog's high-pitched confusion alarm. 

We were beginning to think that our dogs were permanently broken. Nothing we did helped at all to convince the dogs that we had only changed houses and our new house was not, in fact, some sort of death-camp and we weren't actually planning on killing them to fulfill an organ harvest ritual.  Despite our best efforts, they continued to drift around in a sea of confusion and terror, pausing only to look pitiful. 

But while we were unpacking, we found a squeaky toy that was given to us as a gift shortly before we moved.  We offered the toy to the dogs.  This may have been a mistake. 

Upon discovering that the toy squeaked when it was compressed forcefully, the simple dog immediately forgot that she'd ever experienced doubt or anxiety ever in her life.  She pounced on the toy with way more force than necessary, over and over and over.  The logic behind her sudden change in outlook was unclear.   

But at least she was happy again. 

A News Update, a Dramatic Montage and a Video Animation

My friend Colin made a fantastic animation based on one of my old posts:

I'm pretty sure Colin would be totally pumped to get some recognition for his hard work, so if you're feeling helpful, you can go over to Newgrounds and rate the video and/or leave a comment.  If you're confused about how to rate things on Newgrounds, go here.  I have provided a handy screenshot with a giant yellow arrow and some helpful instructions.

In other news, I recently moved to Bend, Oregon because it is quite possibly the best place on earth and just breathing the air here is like huffing joy and celebration.  The bad news is that I've been busy using my shriveled, little t-rex arms in a mismatched battle with heavy boxes and furniture.

Perhaps the exhaustion and feelings of physical inadequacy involved in the move caused me to be slightly more vulnerable than usual, but a few days ago, I wrote this post.  Which I promptly buried below my other posts because it is shameful and it could possibly be interpreted in a way that would make me look like an alcoholic.  

Anyway, I'm working on a new post and, despite signs to the contrary, I'm not beginning an agonizing retreat into a life of substance abuse and failure.  In fact, just this morning, I ate fruit, drew a picture of my dog and then later waved pleasantly at a person passing by on the street.  Is that something that a despondent, irreversibly damaged drunk would do?  Kapow. Totally logical and irrefutable rebuttal to your possible doubts.