RUNNING ON EMPTY: A Christmas Tale (revisted 2018)

I’m not one to believe in signs or omens or whatever someone might call them, but I should have known. Yes, I should have known and I should have taken action. I could have locked myself in my house—Christmas be damned (yes, that’s probably heresy)—and spent the day alone with my dog. I could have faked an illness. I could have gotten myself arrested. Anything. ANYTHING would have been better than living with the humiliation that will now follow me for the rest of my life.

The night before Christmas, the signs began to arrive. I missed those signs, because they really only visible in hindsight. Like Medusa’s face, you can only look at them in reflection.

My little brother had an accident which sent all of us to the Emergency Room. I use the world little because he is younger than me. By all rights, when someone is six feet four inches tall and two hundred fifty founds, the world “little” should never be used as a description. That’s the probably sometimes with being a writer. Accuracy is all based on perception. This is mine. My brother is my little brother, he’ll always be my little brother—the one who hasn’t had my life experience, who doesn’t quite know, who sometimes needs protection and who sometimes needs a kick in the ass. This ER visit was probably one of the latter times.

His accident was quite a horrible thing, a trauma which I’m sure he still relives in his mind to this day. Did he have a car accident? A nasty fall from heights? A slip on the ice? No. No, nothing like that. Nothing that normal would do for my family. On Christmas Eve, 1995, my little brother got one of his not-so-dainty, linebacker sized hands—the right hand to be specific—stuck in a Pringle’s can.

If it were his left hand, I suppose we wouldn’t have ended up in the emergency room. But, my brother is right-handed and he wasn’t doing so well in college even with the ability to take notes and tap a keg. In times of stress, I am often the one to whom everyone looks for support and solutions. I suggested we saw the can off.

My father and my brother both thought this was a good idea. This isn’t because they are stupid so much as it is because all men seem afflicted with the innate urge to use any excuse to break into a tool box and do “manly things” or solve problems without the assistance of professions. My father was halfway to the garage when my mother put the breaks on the plan which would have made this story considerably shorter.

My mother, with her proper European manners, unjustly fell in love with an American heathen. She came to this country and birthed two barbarian children. She announced that she didn’t think my idea was such a good one. She may have come to this conclusion because I was laughing. She’s deeply suspicious of my laughing—it’s a European mother thing, I think.

I then suggested—because I tend to get carried away when people start taking my advice—that we use the chainsaw. Because, hell, the chainsaw gets used only once a year anyway. It’s sole purpose in a house of bankers is to cut the bottom off of the live Christmas tree. But now, it could be used to rescue my brother from his dilemma. It was perfect!

The problem was then discussed. We had a moment of holiday togetherness and family unity which still brings a tear to my eye as I remember it. We didn’t argue because no one paid any more attention to my increasingly dramatic solutions. We all—well, they—decided that, since a Pringle’s can isn’t transparent and we couldn’t quite be sure where Tony’s fingers were, sawing might be difficult.  My brother, still salivating over the idea of a trip to the tool box, tried one last time. “I can tell you where my fingers are,” he offered. “I can feel the top chip. I can almost get it.”

“Are you sweating on them?” I asked him. “You know, the rest of us might have wanted one or two.”

He hit me with the can. Possibly this was a vain attempt to dislodge the thing. “I’m the one with the can stuck on my hand!” He’s the baby in the family; the victim card belongs to him always.

It was my mother’s idea to head to the emergency room when all the tugging failed. She usually wins our family discussions.

So, we went to the emergency room—all of us. It was Christmas Eve and my mother insists we all be together on Christmas Eve. My father insists that my mother gets what she asks for. After two hours in the waiting room, listening to children cry and watching them wipe snot off their dirty faces onto their dirty pajama sleeves, the can came off. Apparently vegetable oil from the hospital kitchen did the trick. Huh, never considered that.

On my way home, while my brother munched happily on the leftover Pringles, I figured the worst was over.

I was wrong.

Presents came. And these were omens as well.

My parents got me a few CDs. Remember this was 1995, no downloads available, kids, no iPods or MPS3s. CDs were the thing. My parents had bought themselves a CD player that year and had been frequenting the music stores in the mall. Once upon a time, there’d been music stores in malls instead of iTunes Top 40 lists. I eagerly unwrapped my gifts. My Christmas gifts were Abba’s Greatest Hits, Barry Manilow, Air Supply and the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. If the Bee Gees aren’t an evil omen, I don’t know what is, frankly.

“What’s wrong?” my father asked. “You really wanted that Saturday Night Fever album.”

“That was fifteen years ago!!” I exclaimed. “When I was young and stupid. I gave you a list. How could you mess this up? Where’s Pearl Jam? Green Day? Bush? Nine Inch Nails?” This was the hayday of my music. As far as I’m concerned, grunge never died; unfortunately, Barry Manilow hasn’t either. “These aren’t even in the same place in the store!”

My parents mumbled something which sounded like “ungrateful” under their breaths.

Hideous as all this sounds, I didn’t see them as omens. Horrible omens for the true horror which would scar me psychologically until this day and probably until the day I die. There’s no therapy for this kind of thing. There’s no safe place to run to. There just is this. It’s amazing I escaped without undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Christmas day would bring the true horrors, delivered by some creepy, soot-covered, imaginary dude straight to my already disturbed psyche.

Each and every Christmas, we pack up for the drive to my aunt’s house in New Bremen, Ohio. New Bremen is about three hours away, three hours of cornfields dotted with the occasional one-street no-stoplight town.

We packed up our things: presents for my cousins which I refrained from opening to search for Pearl Jam or better yet replace their gifts with ABBA or Barry, a six pack of Pepsi, a box of King Dongs, books to read on the trip for my mother and brother, a notepad and five pens for me. I once ran out of ink during one of these family trips and nearly had a nervous breakdown because my dad refused to stop to buy new ones. WE DON’T STOP FOR ANYTHING, is his mantra. Ever since that day, I’ve become paranoid about writing utensils and bring along spares. These days I have my trusty surface and a charging cord so if I die in a snow pile, I’ll be able to drain the battery of my vehicle with my last few words—which will probably not be words of kindness to snow plow drivers, by the way. Sorry.

Off we went. A cold, snowy 1995 Christmas morning spent in a car on the way to what might be described as a convention of over-indulgence preceded by disagreements and complaints.

Just past Fremont, about 30 minutes into the trip, my mother announced to my father, “When you find some place to stop, I have to use the bathroom.”

Not only would a similar request from my brother or me have been met with ridicule, but it would have been completely ignored. WE DON’T STOP. We certainly don’t make good time when we stop “every five damn minutes.” My brother and I exchanged a look. Then we looked out at the flat, empty fields waiting for farmers to revive them in the spring; at the scraggly bare trees that broke up the wasteland of tundra around us; at the swirling whirlwinds of snow racing across the emptiness in mockery of nuclear winter.

We drove through tiny towns with closed gas stations, closed stores, everything closed for Christmas! We drove past fields without a tree on them for miles. The worst were the houses along the way, knowing there inside each one was a bathroom, maybe even two, and knowing instinctively that those toilets were hopelessly unreachable, unapproachable, unwelcoming.

But still, nothing compares to the agony of sitting in a car with someone who is squeezing her eyes shut, bouncing up and down in the seat, sucking her breath, whipping her head back and forth in a wild frenzy to maintain control. You sit quietly. Afraid to laugh. Afraid to look at the suffering party. Afraid to make eye contact with anyone else. You fight the almost over-powering urge to open up one of those ice-cold Pepsi’s just because you want to hear the sound of the pressure inside being released.

Then, between Bettsville and Fostoria, facing miles of more closed gas stations and open farmland, my father pulled off the main road onto a little dirt road near a hedge which made a pathetic shelter. Thankfully, the snow had picked up and provided a little more camouflage. “You can squat in front of the car,” he told my mother. “None of us will look.”

Proper manners be damned!! My mother flings open the door and hurries into the negative temperatures in her high heels and brand new sparkling Christmas dress.

We all look at our feet and wait.

But, I can’t resist.

I’m always the one.

I look up.

I see a head above the hood of the Buick. Everything else is hidden. Snow sticks to my mother’s lipstick. Her dangling pearl earrings bounce in the wind. The expression of relief on her face is so profound, I imagine the Rapture.

I start to giggle.

My brother starts in.

My father covers his smirking with a well-paced cough.

My mother’s look of relief disappears as she returns to the vehicle yanking up her silk pantyhose. She stares at her barbarian children rolling in the back seat with tears rolling down their faces.

The Buick pulls carefully back onto the main road.

“It’s not funny!” she yells at us.

“Don’t laugh at your mother,” Dad threatens, but his voice is cracking and his usual authority is absent.

“Anyone thirsty?” I ask.

My brother’s Pepsi comes out his nose.

“It’s not funny!” my mother growls again.

The adventure becomes taboo. A family secret, unspeakable and best left forgotten. But family secrets aren’t so sacred in the home where a writer lives. It germinates in my mind all day until on the way back, I asked, “Dad, what’s the name of that street we pulled off on. I need the detail. It’s called local color.”

“You are NOT writing about this,” my mother warns.

I found the place where it happened.

Now, I have an image in my mind. An older couple stands hand-in-hand by a lit-up Christmas tree. Children and grandchildren fill their cozy home. A fireplace crackles and warms the room. Presents wrapped in shiny paper and bows glitter under the tree. All of them are blissfully unaware of how fortunate they are to have a bathroom they can use between Bettsville and Fostoria.

And then, the patriarch of this brood looks up and out the big front bay window. Through the big flakes of gently falling snow blanketing his yard in fluffy whiteness, like God’s grace bringing purity to those who accept love, the man sees something. “HEY! That lady is peeing on our driveway!!”