Forever and a day ago, before everyone stopped checking here
because I never post, I told you about present opening protocol; at least that
it existed. Well, today you're going to learn what the rules actually are, so
that I'll have evidence for when later this year my whole family decides to act
like a bunch of assholes during present opening. The guidelines are fairly
simple and very rigid. The only person who should have trouble with this is me
since I am stuck in the limbo between "kid" and "grown up"
and yet I'm the only one who can handle it.
Through the use
of diagrams and my descriptive skill I will now paint a you a picture of the
peaceful, fair Christmas I yearn for (when I was an only child, this was far
easier).
First thing you
need to know, the living room at my parents' house looks like this on Christmas
Eve:
I know it's huge, it was either REALLY big or REALLY small
(giggity). So, we're dealing with that room and a bunch of loud ass people all
yelling and trying to get situated. Once everyone gets an ass in a seat, they
inevitably turn to me and tell me to begin bossing everyone around. This would
be great except that 10 seconds later I'm getting mocked and the little(er)
kids are getting told to just open gifts. This would be fine except if you've
ever told a young child/tween to "just do (something)" you know that
they just gape open mouthed like you just spoke Mandarin Chinese instead of
telling them to unwrap a bunch of free shit.
That's why my
rules go like this:
1. The children
hand the adults their gifts from them.
2. Once all the
adults have all their gifts, each person opens one per circuit ONE AT A TIME.
(this is the part that my family just cannot fucking handle) I spend a lot of
time considering, purchasing, and wrapping gifts for every member of my family,
I want to see their reaction god dammit!
3. After we've
completed sufficient circuits so that all the adults' presents are unwrapped,
then the chillins get to go. ONE AT A TIME alternating between them so that
everyone gets proper acknowledgement and so they can actually absorb what it is
they've received instead of just moving onto the next like greedy little
hooligans.
BTW, circuits
go like this:
[editor's
note: MS Paint is hard.]
I simply
cannot handle a world in which everyone just rips the wrapping off of every
gift in 8.3 seconds, not even knowing what they got or who gave it them; that
is not a world in which I will ever live. If you aren't patient enough for the
system, I guess you don't get presents; sucks to suck.
This made my day! It was even better than the duck I didn't know I liked. Very few people will understand what high praise that is but you will and that's all that counts. :)
ReplyDeleteI hate Christmas. Everyone expects me to open my presents in front of them in order to see my reaction, which I see is something you like, too. Well, not cool. Sometimes people get you horrible gifts, and my reaction might be to vomit. Then what?
ReplyDeleteThen you make them clean up your puke and stop inviting them to your holiday celebrations!
DeleteI think I just saved Christmas.