According To Someone Else's Watch...(The Christmas Ballte Begins)

IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME AGAIN, and while for many of you that means visions of sugar plums and dreams of chance meetings with Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt under the mistletoe, for me it means hunkering down in my bunker busily preparing yet another defense against yet another onslaught from my family, the enemy as I affectionately refer to them, and their demon gift.

See, dating back to days before I even have memories, my family has been trying to get me to wear a watch. They’ve prodded me with everything from “you never know when you may need to know” to “you never know when someone may ask you” to “how will you know when your two minute egg is done?” A traipse through my photo album reveals an endless array of devises forced upon me under the guise of “gift giving holidays” from Easter to Arbor Day to the odd Thursday in February when the climate would grow unseasonably warm and my family would proclaim it “Up We Go Spring Day,” all in hopes I would, one day, do something very strange and actually wear one of them.

After years of mental maneuvering so deft and precise, however, my family gave up, retreated, quit like a yellow backed puppy up against a pit bull…only to return two years later with “The Annual Christmas Tradition” (I thought since Christmas only comes but once a year, the use of the word “annual” was a bit redundant, but that’s probably something best discussed with a linguist).

Anyway, after a few years of guffaws and jaw drops and near side steps of the full court offensive, leaving, only momentarily, my wrist naked as the day it was born (or is it the day I was born? I mean, did it just come with me or…? Reminder to self: ask mother for refresher course on birds and bees), at least naked as god intended, I finally decided to become simpatico with the other side, telling the giver du jour they were right. It was time I started wearing a watch.

Lo, though, every year, I always, mournfully and regrettably found something wrong with whatever kind of watch they had chosen and suggested I bring it back to the store for a more proper model, deserving both of the title Christmas gift and Chris’ first watch, and every Christmas I have been doing just that.

Braving enormous crowds, horrendous weather and the periodic urge for an ice cream just to flip the bird in the face of winter, I return to the store, and every Christmas I regurgitate my tale of woe all over the customer service representative with the surprisingly cheerful demeanor and every year I return, once again, to hearth and home… with a series of new compact discs, claiming they were out of watches.

This was my piece de resistance, my Sistine Chapel, the one scam with which all would remember me by…until last Christmas, that is. For last year, plainly, honestly and without a hint of the subtle humor we’d grown to love and expect from him playing about his eyes, my uncle questioned the plausibility of my argument, being that said article had been purchased at an establishment called The Watch Store.

I saw, now, a fatal flaw in my defense, a fly in my ointment, a chink in my armor, some chocolate in my peanut butter, a…well, I’m sure you understand, and so, unfortunately, did they. This pit bull had become a mouse, a mouse crawling unavoidably closer to his trap.

And, so I sit, hunkered in my bunker, less than a month from battle, and no closer to a plan. I have even intercepted transmissions revealing the possibility of a pocket watch as this year’s choice, leaving my “Naked Wrist Defense” by the wayside like so many broken leaves on the highway of time (or some such pretentious metaphor).

It seems it’s time, once again, to invoke my Great Granpappy Johnson who declared proudly while a young man entrenched in a foxhole in Europe, the enemy baring down, “When your back’s against it, quit,” thus laying the foundation of the Johnson legacy for future generations to come. (Great Granpappy Johnson never did make it out of the foxhole that day, though no one could ever discover how it was fifteen separate bullets were found in his body…all American).

In the end, who knows? Maybe Angelina Jolie’s a watch person, maybe my future wife will walk up to me on the street, naked wrist lay bare, and ask me the time, and maybe, just maybe come December 25th, I will have the best two minute egg I’ve ever had.