Can I tell you something? I hate December 1st. Every year the same things happen. I go to
sleep on November 30th all is fine and good. Then? I don’t wake up in my bed. Wake up and it’s
Dec 24th, 1967. See me in my stupid brown sports coat, brown pants ugly print shirt. Stupid stunned
look on my face. As if terrible news came my way…
Do you have any idea how much work I did
throughout my 20’s losing the weight, fix my hair, and create a better personality? I can tell you, it
took years of hard work, some therapy, and a whole new sense of style.
Does that seem to matter in the
least? Nope. The worst thing about this whole experience? I’m not even in my own body.
No way to wake up or go to the gym or fix something. I’m stuck at the top of the Christmas tree inside the
angel.
Yeah, atop the tree, inside the Christmas Tree Angel. I have a pine tree stuck
up my butt! Can you appreciate how that feels? OK, fine, I don’t know what it does either. No
sensations as that tree topper. It is annoying I can’t speak, move, do anything.
The thing
is? I watch myself do the same things repeatedly. This has been going on for ten years now.
The first couple of years I thought it was a weird dream. Something to do with the holidays, maybe so bad
turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving or something.
That isn’t it. Did things to switch what I
ate. Went from fasting to only having fruit, gluten-free, dairy-free, you name it? I freed it.
Nothing works.
No one can convince me it isn’t real at this point. It happens the same time every
single year. I attempt to stay awake, drown my sorrows in scotch, drink more coffee than any two people,
none of it works. Go to sleep on Nov 30th; wake up, it’s Dec 24th, 1967.
It is the worst Christmas
Eve ever. The woman I thought was my girlfriend gets engaged to my younger brother. Seems they had
been dating for about three months, I never had a clue. Even my mom knew, no one told me.
I lost my
job that day; I had been a UPS worker, stacking packages in trucks. Yep, the guy in the UPS warehouse, I
was the one stacking boxes in the brown trucks. Got fired on Dec 24th, 1967 because I didn’t stack the
packages fast enough.
Found out two weeks later, fired because Bob Cranston wanted his son-in-law the
job. Not having worked there long enough, yet, hadn’t gotten vested. Could be let go for any
reason. My feet could have been too big, too smelly? Boom out the door.
The last straw for
that day, my best friend in the universe passed away. My goldfish named Newt. It is silly I agree to
cry up over a dead goldfish; he was my best friend. Never judged me, listened, never complained.
Found him floating upside down in his bowl when I got home from being fired. Flushed him
down the toilet, he swirls around his funeral at sea.
Every single year I sit atop the Christmas tree and
I watch all of this happen again and again. Doors close, I’m stressed out just go fired. I stuff my
face with fruit cake I don’t even want. Sally comes in, tells me she had good news and bad news.
Good, she is getting married, bad not to me.
Trying to control myself, I head into the bedroom,
Newt is a floater. Every single time.
Not sure what I will do different this year except? I’m
going to mom’s house and I’m breaking that ornament. Will smash it into a hundred pieces at
Thanksgiving. Then we will see what happens on Dec 1st.
Summary
Based on this picture, I wrote this story. What do you think?
