The Wampler family has arrived, once and for all, in the future. How do I know this? The old-school toothbrush that has been a stocking stuffer since the earliest days of my youth was replaced this year by a mechanical toothbrush. It was shocking...almost too shocking for nine a.m. I'm lucky that I didn't have a heart attack from the surprise, since that definitely would have ruined Christmas for the rest of my family.
Once I got over that early shock, the rest of my Christmas morning was fantastic. Since we had exchanged gifts with my sister and her family on Christmas Eve afternoon, it was just my parents, my brother and I all morning, which was rather peaceful. True to form, my first gift from my parents was a box of rocks; my brother got a box of dirt, while my mother got a box of sand. We had to open everything else before the meaning of these first gifts became clear. My brother and I got the traditional equal number of DVDs, although mine trended towards fun/independent ('Hero', 'Life Aquatics', 'Eternal Sunshine', etc.), while my brother's trended towards weird mishmash of eclectic tastes ('Aladdin', 'Stargate: Season 2', 'Oklahoma!', etc.). I also got a Russian cookbook from my parents (who liked mine so much that they bought another for themselves--I see borscht in my future) and an Indian cookbook from my brother. I'm betting that the Indian cookbook will help me to turn out a big mass of lentils to rival the kind folks at Lucky Dhaba. Things diverged a bit in the middle--while my brother got useful, manly things like vice grips (what are vice grips, anyway?), I got useful, womanly things like new jersey-knit sheets and a fantastic set of red earthenware bowls. Since I expressly requested both the bowls and the sheets (and since my brother also got casserole dishes), I can't really accuse my parents of blatant sexism.
We had a bit of fun in the middle with the presents that Michael and I gave our parents. Mine followed this year's Christmas theme of 'pass off souvenirs from India as Christmas presents', so I gave my father a couple of elephants and a box carved out of camel bone, while my mother got a velvet bedspread, some Christmas ornaments, and a Bohemian glass bowl (granted, not Indian, but the only thing that was destroyed in transit was my third gift for her, so I was desperate). Michael admittedly did much better than me in the parental gift department, though--he gave my mother the radio that was the only thing on her request list, and gave my father a railroad signal lamp that weighs about 300 pounds and almost killed him over the past couple of days as he wrestled it into and out of his warehouse by himself. Oh, well, I can give him a year of favorite-child status as I plot to steal it away from him.
The last gifts tied into the first gifts, as I expected. My box of rocks alluded to a beautiful white gold necklace and pair of earrings set with emeralds and diamonds, while my mother's sand foreshadowed the pearls that my father gave her. My brother's dirt actually came from part of his gift--the five city lots that border his warehouse. I don't know if 'city' is the right word for a town of six hundred people, but it gives him almost half a city block of his very own. He's a regular land mogul now, which is pretty impressive if you don't look at the real estate too hard :) I guess that means I should start buying property, since my status as a permanent renter is not going to help me retire anytime in the next fifty years.
After the last presents were unwrapped and we were all feeling the afterglow of giving and getting great presents, my grandmother came over for Christmas dinner. This was the first year that it has ever been just the five of us for Christmas dinner, which was a little weird, but it was still v. nice. For some completely unnecessary reason, we had *eighteen pounds* of ham for five people, which of course means that we'll be eating ham sandwiches for days. That's fine with me, since I love ham--but it's just funny that I will be seeing Katie for the first time in a year, and my mother will most likely be making ham and beans. Due to a series of unfortunate coincidences during my youth, Katie thinks that we eat ham and beans all the time, but we really only have once or twice a year at most. So, this year is not going to help me win the argument about our rate of ham and bean consumption :( After I was all filled up with ham and scalloped potatoes, I took a nap, then hung out with my family. Gram left late in the afternoon, and the four of us ended up playing 'Scotland Yard'.
'Scotland Yard' is this game from the 1980s that my family used to play before my sister took it to her house to establish her game collection. When I was in Qmart in Hyderabad one afternoon several months ago, I found several copies of it in the toy section, so I bought two--one for my brother for Christmas, and one for the family so that we could play it even if my brother took his away from us. It's a pretty good game, involving a map of London, a shady character called 'Mr. X', and a collaborative team effort to track down Mr. X using a combination of buses, taxis, and the Underground. It never became a major hit in the US, though, and has long been out of circulation (in fact, I've never met anyone else who has ever played it). However, it's apparently alive and well in India, since this copy was printed in 2005. It was made by some Indian company called Funskool, who clearly borrowed their logo from Playskool and all of their games and products from other Western toy companies. The game was almost identical to the game of yore, although the pieces were extremely ghetto--one color was supposed to be purple, but was actually a weird pink that my family christened 'nipple'. I really enjoyed the game; my father was Mr. X, but the rest of us managed to catch him before he escaped. I'm sure we have more games in store for us over the next few days, since we rarely seem to leave the house when I'm home.
Okay, this post was extremely long and boring, and I should go to bed. Merry Christmas, everyone! (and Happy Hannukah to those of you out there who are into that sort of thing :)
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