Start the Story [12.28.09] Plus a Giveaway!!
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“Stephanie wasn’t thrilled with this recession-inspired Christmas tree.” ~ (submitted by Cory)
It was Christmas 1983. Mom’s propensity for crazy photo ops hit an all-time low. Simply posing in front of the tree wasn’t good enough for her, we were the tree. Talk about embarrassing. How would I ever face my friends again?
Guess jeans and the Griswolds were cool in 1989, but owning some while resembling them wasn’t.
Dad said the egg nog was mixed a little stronger than normal this year. The big kids all got to taste it, but me, I got chocolate milk. And the bottom of the family tree.
In the middle, of course.
Oh how Amanda hated her family. And this Christmas she was finally going to show them just how much.
Sometimes family ties are the worst sort of bondage. By the time she was ten years old Brittany knew she’d have to do something extreme, perhaps something dangerous to extricate herself from a clan as loud and glittery as the Singing Sinclairs.
I failed miserably. Almost every gift I set out to buy for someone was bought by someone else. There were a few that I talked myself out of because they were such a great expenditure that I was afraid of making the wrong decision. Some gifts were even forgotten, left in a bag somewhere to be giving late, be given to someone else, kept for myself or saved until next year.
When the walls came down, the photo fluttered to the ground after the bones fell into a dusty heap. Martha sighed. Now there was going to be hell to pay with the found bones. She wondered who’s body was in the wall, and looking at the photo, she thought it was the youngest daughter, the grumpy one.
Every year, never failed. Mom would bring some dumb ass home, get sloushed on egg nog and make us take a new family photo with Mr. Right Now. It didn’t matter to Donnie and Mel; they had cars. It would be me sitting next to the lovebirds on the two-person love seat, watching White Christmas. “Hell no,” I thought. “Not this year.” I was going to tell Mr. Rodgers’ twin to leave with a friendly, “don’t let the door hit ya, where the good lord split ya”. It was only a matter of how…