Shutdown Fullcast - Christmas Disasters

Episode Date: December 31, 2019

On this episode, people are injured/attacked by brothers, birds, guns, knives, Nerf ammunition, fool's gravy, squirrels, fish bones, and The Emotional Expectations That Come With Christmas. It's fun! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Shutdown Fullcast. You're coming in to the Melodious sounds, and I mean melodious very, very literally. of the shutdown fullcast name as played by listener and fulcaster Brian. We've got a podcast listener named Brian. What were the odds? About as good as a podcaster being named Brian. That is our theme. And every week, we try to take a different listener submission for said theme. If you have a theme and you would like to submit it, no guarantees that we're going to use it. but if it's good we'll be shocked if it's bad

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conversation in a couple weeks and use it anyway because full cast the melodica the only instrument just as the shutdown fullcast is the only college football podcast on these here internets we have a very important college football related topic to discuss with every you college football is a very important game. But no game is more important than that of Christmas. And this, this will be a time to recount everything that happened over the holidays. And if you're one of our listeners, chances are your life at one point or consistently is a series of ever unfolding disasters. Ryan, what we're going to hit him with today? With our Christmas, you want me to lead with my Christmas disaster? Ooh, yeah, I want this. Yeah.

Crack your rib cage open, Ryan, and bleed for us. So my Christmases have been pretty standard, I would say. Like one of the consequences of my parents are both from California and most of their family is back there. And when they had three kids in Florida, they were like, yeah, we're not fucking traveling. So we had a lot of- That's a neat trick.

We had a lot of free method. Yeah. We had a lot of small Christmases that were just us and maybe like a couple of cousins or something. Like, you know, pretty low-key. I do vividly remember one Christmas, probably in the, like, early 90s or so, we're opening presents. And my mom is not by nature an extraordinarily confrontational person.

She likes to avoid conflict. She likes to smooth things over. That doesn't mean she, like, doesn't get angry or won't argue, but it, you know, has to sort of reach a certain point. And usually when she does it, she's very upset. She's, like, worked up. And she did something I've never seen her do on this Christmas before that day or really since. She opened up a present from my father.

And the present was a salad shooter. And if you're not familiar with what a salad shooter is, it's basically like a, like a food processor, but with the blade attachment. And it's all sort of made so you can put salad vegetables in. it will like slice them or julia and then it'll just spit it out and the idea is like okay instead of cutting up a cucumber and some carrots on a cutting board like it'll just spit them out also you can really overclock these things if you want to right so my mom unwraps the salad shooter in the box looks at it and hands it to my father and just says no and that was and that was it we just like quietly like moved on to the next person to open a present

but she just she just as if as if he had just like failed in some really functional way like in the way if your father asked you like hey can you bring me a phillips head screwdriver and you brought a spatula and he just said no and handed it back to you that was the same emotional tenor of that Christmas moment. I'm not here to suggest that we know early on in life what our own families in the future will be, but do you know who that story really reminds me of and who I could really see saying that?

Your wife. Yeah. I I will never get her a salad shooter. No, she's trained you well. I have learned from my father's mistake. And isn't that what parents are supposed to do? Yeah, yeah. Not necessarily. Okay. Oh, funny story. Okay.

My latest Christmas disaster is two-fold and comes fresh from this Christmas. Shit, yes. Yeah. One, if you have a six-year-old and a six-year-old whose desires and plans for this world are rather rigid, what might say, or rather specific. What they're expecting when they remove the wrapping paper from a present is the thing that they told you. they want it. When did they tell you they wanted it? 36 hours prior to Christmas. And you, rather nonchalantly, rolled it off saying, ah, surely this child who wants a thousand toys a day, we'll want something else. And this morning when you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up,

he said a ballerina and an astronaut. And yesterday when you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said president and a dinosaur. So, correct. Yeah. Understandable is what I'm saying. Some stones in this stream don't move, and some of them do, and you won't know which one of them they are until you look for them and they're not there, i.e. my six-year-old opened the three carefully curated presents. I purchased for him, looked at me on Christmas morning, and said, I didn't expect this. I wanted this other thing, and you have let me down. He said that? Yeah. Did he say, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed? This is a big improvement over the time I got him a book for his birthday. Mm-hmm. And he just, like, threw himself on the ground.

I feel like your son, your son and my mom should just have Christmas together and just be like, do we agree what we're expecting here? And have we met those expectations? Great, let's open presents and have a single grilled cheese sandwich. So was this, was this pronouncement delivered, what was his emotional state? Was the pronouncement delivered calmly? No. Oh, oh goodness. Anger, disappointment, hurt, top of his lungs. How long did that last? Five hours. What? Five hours. How many other people were in the house? How many other people were in your house? The thing he wanted so bad, it gets worse. It was, it was. a two thousand, it was a Hess truck if you're not familiar with the Hess truck it's back and it's all new and better

right and they sell a very well made cool Hess truck makes noises and is a pretty sizable well-built toy and they make a different one every year did he want the one that they made for this year which is a very large

tow truck no no somebody got a hold of my phone managed has enough wherewithal to search for Hess truck archive and wanted a 2012 Hess truck, a very specific one that is no longer sold at Hess gas stations and has to be ordered on eBay. Mind you, I'm going to remind you, 36 hours before Christmas,

he decided this was the only thing he wanted five chronological 60-minute hours. Did he want the helicopter and rescue truck collectibles? He wanted that 12 and O Notre Dame Hess truck. It's only 13. it's only 1350 that is the exact one god damn i'm sure you couldn't spend 1350

on your child's happiness this is the worst oh god i've never seen you actually look mad at me this is the worst part oh jesus don't do that it wasn't even a matter did you look at him like that i would have cried too i wish you guys could see the look you just gave me you could melt steel i try my real hard okay how much would it have cost not to just buy it but to like uh over night that's beyond overnighting it right well you just got to find somebody you just got to find somebody

local who's selling it on eBay so you just go down to the local Hes truck store yeah I got to hit the streets slipping 20s to everybody at the shoe shine stands seeing if they know where you know I can pick up a Hestruck on the black market oh no yeah that's that was my that's awesome yeah the second the second Christmas disaster is even better because because I really did give, I allowed my kids to open a present on Christmas Eve when they opened the present on Christmas Eve. What they discovered were a pair of Nerf guns. Were they the flashiest biggest Nerf guns? No, those were the ones I got them the next day. These were a small pair of like basically pistol-shaped Nerf guns that fire a small ball.

Your Saturday night special. No. Remember in Men in Black when Will Smith gets the tiny gun? And they go, ah, it's the noisy cricket. Yeah. Yeah. And he pulls the trigger on the noisy cricket, and it blows him back 20 feet and knocks out every window on a sitting block. They're a little bit bigger than the noisy cricket.

They're like a block 26. Anyway. It doesn't matter how I know that. When I gave them all of that, I said, hey, boys, what you should do is you should not point these at anyone. Don't shoot each other with them. Don't shoot yourselves with them. And go play with them.

How long did it take for my elder child, the one, nine, to shoot himself in the eye, six minutes. How did he, okay? Cop. I said, what did you think would happen when you looked in the barrel of a Nerf gun and pulled the trigger? He said, I don't know. And I said, that's wrong. You do know that. Yeah, the scientific method demands testing, asshole.

who else did he shoot his grandmother sure with a ball by the way that hits with the force of a fucking brick like just Spencer why are you looking at me like that

so you got them like who gave these oh oh who gave these to my kids okay Santa we had to talk about this the one the one where the ball the one where the ball hit my my mother their grandmother

They're so hard. I wrote on the box that they only work outside and that they have to open them outside. A lady who's raised, I think, four boys at this point has experienced every kind of a name, stupid, masculine, misdage possible. We had a long conversation about this, and you thought that they could handle these. She turned around immediately and said, no, no, no. Now, listen, kids, Santa said these are only for crowd control, okay? Dispersed, disperse. Spencer, did you say that they were getting Nerf guns on two separate days?

Yeah, so I got them Nerf guns because I thought that the, okay, I thought that if you got them the Nerf guns with the little balls, that they would get lost immediately. Oh, no, they bounce right back to you after hitting someone at like 85 miles an hour. I strategized this. Yeah, that's the worst part. We had several conversations before I purchased these about could they handle these? Were they going to be used outside? Were we going to have a conversation with them about gun safety and how these aren't real guns? So how you shouldn't point them or other guns at people?

We did. Had that whole conversation? So I feel like all the contain breaking went on on your end. Uh-huh. Sure. You know, you can also, you gave them a Nerf grenade. Yeah? Yeah.

I gave you a Nerf grenade. No, you gave my 6-year-old a Nerf grenade. I gave you a Nerf grenade. And he set it off in the living room while everybody was there. Did I enjoy that? that I actually did. I actually really enjoyed watching everybody wonder what the hell of I'm the cool aunt in case you were wondering. There's my Christmas disasters and they're fresh. Look, I wrote only works outside on the package. I am, I am, yeah, I was going to say I

am exhumed. What's that thing, Ryan? Exonerate. You're exonerated. Yeah, yeah. I am also exhumed. I like that we also now establish that Jason is just as much of a lawyer as I am. So that's Yep, I am Ryan's school attorney. That was pretty good. Spencer's just kind of sitting hunched over in his chair and glaring at me with the weariness of a thousand generations. Good. Anyway, if you don't have kids, my recommendation is to buy noise making or shooting toys for all your friends who have kids because the kids will love you. And that's what matters.

Yeah, that's all right. We'll come back to us. You want to share a couple readers? adventures first? No, no, I want to do mine. I think we need an emotional come down because you're still looking at me like you're going to shift me. Families are complicated. Yeah, families are complicated, right, buddy? Nerf shivs. What could go wrong with Nerf shivs. That's probably fine. Oh, also buy them extra ammo. Yeah. Nerf poison. So I'm going to tell a quick story about, I'm going to give you guys an old Christmas story, a new Christmas story.

I'm going to tell you the story of three consecutive medical disaster Christmases in my house. And then I will tell you an old favorite story about gravy and why we don't make gravy in my house anymore. Over a series of three consecutive Christmases in the early 20 teens, since we're at the end of a decade right now, it feels appropriate to look back. all of the following things happened. I want to say this was 2010. This was the, this is actually a couple of funny stories rolled into one. This was in 2010,

I think, the first year that my brother and I had both brought our significant others home to my parents' house for Christmas. And none of us at the time were married. And my mother is not, liberal, not liberal, but pragmatic, I think, about these matters. My father prefers to live in a world where a don't ask, don't tell policy was very, I think was very much on his mind when he sat my brother and I down very seriously and informed us that my brother's girlfriend,

who I had never met, and she's lovely, by the way, she's now my sister-in-law and the mother of my two nieces and she's lovely but we had never met and my father's idea of christmas propriety was that she and i would share a bed that she would sleep in my room with me and that my size what size bed oh it's fine that's not an issue like i my my mother has turned my childhood bedroom into a yoga studio slash gift wrapping closet and that included at one point wedging my parents' old king bed into a room that's not really made to accommodate it. So my room is basically like a romper room. It's kind of like a trampling gym because this bed takes up most of it. So there's a king size bed in my in my childhood bedroom that is incredibly

uncomfortable and way too small, but it's big. It's a big bed in a small room. And but still, this is me sharing a bed with a person I had met that day who, you know, along with all of the, like the awkwardness, right? Along with all of the general, you know, I'm meeting my boyfriend's family over the holidays for the first time and I have to share a bed with his older sister. Like, that's some family stone shit. And so he explained this and my brother and I are kind of cutting eyes at each other being like, does he know what's happening next? And I said, so will Doug and Joshua be sharing a bed? And my dad said, well, yes. And I was like, dad, you realize that like, If they roll towards each other, you know, things could touch.

And I was kind of joking. But my dad immediately started to stammer. And he was like, well, now you see. And that was it. Like we had held it in at that moment. But my brother and I fell out laughing in the floor. Every time I see two dudes who, two or three dudes who have to share a hotel room and inevitably like two of them or three of them have to end up in like a gigantic bed, right? This happens in Vegas.

people. Which is fine. This is like puppies. Dicks touch. It happened. Two dicks touching by an open fire. Like, Doug and my brother had known each other for a while at this point. I had never met the girlfriend. That was fine. My sister-in-law, who was a stranger to me and I sharing a bed was fine for my father. But the notion of two dicks sharing a bed that might wiggle towards each other, put him off the entire plan immediately. I just see the, I just see like bear party, right? admit because we're bears yeah we're in the bed uh so that that plan ended before it began but so a christmas that began like that ended with it's it's my my my now sister-in-law's first christmas with us she was not feeling well and is she's from franklin uh and is an extremely a franklinian girl by which i mean she's extremely polite uh extremely proper in all things and did not want to burden any of her host by mentioning that she wasn't feeling well. Fast forward to Christmas Eve when my now sister-in-law is having an emergency appendectomy

at the hospital. Good call. Because she's like, I really don't feel well and she stands up and just hits the floor. Hey, hey, you know you get at the hospital, your own damn bed, that's what. I know. Well, I asked her many years later,

I was like, when you stood up and you're like, I don't feel good, were you just going to go off in a corner and die like a cat and she was like look whatever happened i just wanted to do it quietly are you sure like this is what i mean by tennessee middle tennessee being a little midwestern she's got no very minnesota it's fine but it's also very east tennessee and because this is a middle tennessee girl coming to an east tennessee household and adopting our tradition of i'm either going to go die in the woods alone or i'm going to come back and be fine hi could i uh could I trouble you for two ibuprofen, some socks to stuff in my mouth, and a carving knife. Thank you.

Yeah, I was like, what was going to happen if you had made it to the bedroom and just like laid down? So anyway, the next Christmas after that, about half of the family came down with coming out of both ends, stomach flu, on the same week as the entire sewer line on our street collapsed. hey everybody pay your taxes and don't vote down taxes to repair your city's water system because sometimes your sewer lines on a street will collapse on Christmas Eve and none of your bathrooms will work and there will be sewage flooding up into the bathrooms on the lower floor of your house while half of your family is puking their guts up and shitting like minks. I think we had I think we had Chinese food last year. Alex Kirshner and all of our chosen listeners are right. It's pretty good. And then the year

after that, all of my boyfriend's family with whom I was supposed to spend Christmas was sick except for, he's got a very large family. And everybody except for me, him and his father were down with some kind of raging actual flu. And we decided that we were going to have steak for Christmas dinner, like just the three minutes. Like let's make some steak and potatoes and just like, you know, sit out on the patio. And I, try to do the steaks in the oven, not knowing that their oven fans did not work and almost set the house on fire. So that's, that's three Christmases in a row. I'll come back and tell the gravy story a little bit later, because I feel like I've been talking a while. Let's get to

some readers. Jason, please select a reader Christmas disaster. From long-time podcast reader, Robert Bernard 86. One Christmas, we had dinner at my aunt's house in Montgomery. My cousin's deadbeat live-in boyfriend decided to do the toast, which was surprising to all in attendance. He proceeded to declare the following. Wow. Christmas already?

I thank God I'm here with y'all. This was supposed to be a surprise engagement party, but she said no, so we just here together loving the Lord. Wait, he said that or he said that, Jason? That was all the following quote from Cousins' Deadbeat Living Boyfriend. That's beautiful, man. That's what I'm saying from now on.

Things go real sour in a social situation. We're just here to gather, love and the Lord. That's like, how'd Clemson get to the playoff? Just here to gather, loving the Lord. That's what Maddie D.N. should have said after the ball game. I thought for a minute when, like, you know, I recently got done watching Florida win the Orange Bowl, which they did. Now I'm going to mention that for the next year.

It's the least consequential Orange Bowl I felt like I've ever watched. Oh, we don't care about Michigan beating Florida beating Michigan anymore. I can continue to mention that too. But, you know, we're on this new thing. Did you call anybody a Walmart person at this Orange Bowl? Just overwrite the tape in your brain. Just never, ever mentioned Michigan ever again. No.

Like Florida has beaten Virginia in bowl season every year now. Yeah, it's very hard to make fun of Virginia. It's on a level that's any. thing but super obscure references to like property rights over human rights Monticello Montalmo you dip shit you designed a round room

you know how hard that is to decorate thank you also to the Twitter user who replied to Richard's jokes about Monticello Richard's excellent jokes about Monticello by calling it Motel 3 5ths yeah that was oh boy

woo yeah so anyway I was thinking of the moment when UBA looked like they might be making a move on an extremely sleepy and uninterested Florida at one point and thought, I'm just here loving the Lord, man. Just watching it happen. Whenever Cousins' deadbeat living boyfriend stands up and says, I got something to say. Listen, let me just say a few words.

That is among the most special possible moments. I like, I really like that he led with like, wow, Christmas, like, he displayed a surprising lack of context for where he was and why he was there. I don't know. I kind of read that as an attempt at a smoking jacket reveal. Like, oh, hello, I didn't see you there. Right, right. At one, at one in-law. Only he landed on Christmas, huh? At one in-law's Christmas, like the real well-off in-laws, the definitely tipsy auntie stood up and said, Wayne's here. We're going to give a special gift to Wayne.

Oh, no. Wayne kind of looked like a Wayne. Wayne looked like a Wayne. And Wayne was from a popka. I don't know, somewhere in that part of Florida. All right. And he stood up and goes, I'm so happy to be here with y'all. I ain't hearing voices no more.

And then. Oh, hey, Wayne. And then for some reason, the tipsy aunt draped like a $200 bathrobe over him and said, that robe's yours now, Wayne. And someone from the family leaned over in my ear, and on cue said, he got hit by a train. Oh, God. Train Wayne.

So, Jesus Christ. Holly, how about you share a reader one? This actually reminded me of a Christmas disaster of my youth. I should say also that my, like Ryan, I mostly had small Christmases. We lived very far away from our massive extended families when I was a kid. And my parents each have one sibling. So it's a different story now because my brother and I both married into families much larger than our own. But usually like Ryan when it was growing up, it was just me and my brother and my parents.

So I say this to preface the story of reader Stephen Con 12. I was 12, says Stephen Conn, 12. Middle Brother was 16, oh dear. And oldest brother was 20. Once again, in keeping with our earlier disaster episode patterns, you will find that whenever multiple brothers and or uncles are involved, things are going to get rowdy. Middle Brother put two T-shirt,

this was presumably before Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, so congratulations. Middle Brother put two T-shirts in a box labeled for me an oldest brother with the note, fight for them. We did. All family, wait for it. All family members cried.

Christmas was suspended for hours and never really resumed. Wait for it. Over a Denver Nuggets shirt. There's one other really great thing to do if you have a younger sibling or cousin who

really likes, say, Legos. is to do what my mother did for years and put five or six Lego bricks into a shirt box that is the rest of the way full of socks or sensible pajama pants. And so when your sibling goes down to shake the presents with their name on them, they think they're getting a stack of Lego boxes and it's all Dockers, my man. Jesus. Yeah. I want to assign.

You say we learn from the women in our family. Yeah. I like that one because it was too. shirts there's two brothers yeah what so i assume he could have just had a note that said fight for them since stephen the little brother ended up with the denver nuggets shirt i assume he lost the fight to the 20 year old unless 20 year old is okay i thought they were had to fight over other shirt would have been as superior to a denver nuggets shirt if we're talking like if we're talking like rainbow logo nuggets shirt i'm not sure what could be superior to that yeah i am i i want to assign some blame here

First, the most blameworthy of these brothers is the oldest brother because he's 20. And if you're 20 and you get a Christmas, if you're 20, you've seen a lot of Christmases, you understand how shit's supposed to go. And if you open a present that says five to 12 year old, you have the wherewithal to say, no, I will not do that on Christmas. What if the president appears it came from the baby Jesus? In that limited circumstances, yes, but there was no situation. suggesting that that happened here. So oldest brother, most to blame. Middle brother, second most to blame. Yes, he set it up, but middle brothers are supposed to cause problems. And he's 16. Like, it's a perfect storm. There's only so much that can happen. Good news,

Stephen, you're the least blameless because you are 12 and your 20 year old older brother presumably came to like form tackle you over a Denver Nuggets shirt. The fact that you got out alive. Yeah, of course all family members cried. That's what was going to happen. But it's not your fault. What if they cried about like the pathetic display of combat? Yeah.

Choke him out. This is terrible mat work. No ground game. It doesn't say whether this is an Ohio State fan. You're a foot taller than him. Come on. I get the, I get it. Calling your name. Spanning

kick. Spanning kick. Yeah, unless the whole family he's yelling, holy shit at once after you pile drive him. Did you really even fight? I get the 20, where the 20 year old's coming from, though. They're the oldest. They didn't get away with anything. That 12 year old, 12 year old doesn't have a job at 12 like the 20 year old did. 20 year old had to go to public school. 20 year old. They might not be Ohio State fans. If they're Ohio, Ohio fans, that 12 year old might be a minor. That, yeah. I mean, M-I-N-E-R. Yeah. A minor, I know the 20-year-old definitely was a minor. I know the 20-year-old definitely was a minor.

I know the 20-year-old's got a chip on his shoulder. But I'll push like that 12-year-old and that 16-year-old. Let me say this. The 16-year-old, that's the real villain here. That's middle-child behavior. Every middle child I've ever known is the one who... Should we get... You're talking about your sister.

Walks into the room, farts, and goes, who did it? Let's all just disclose our birth orders. Oldest. I get it. Another important note here about Stephen. He's a Notre Dame fan from New York. Woo! Yeah, the Mugget's shirt end up in this mix. Stephen, please let us know this.

So I'm also oldest. My middle brother, the aforementioned Todd, the shittiest thing he ever did. The dreaded Todd, the shittiest thing he ever did for Christmas one year when we were probably all in like middle school, high school age, we weren't, as the children were not giving each other presents, me, my brother, and my sister,

until he decided in the middle of opening presents Christmas morning to go to his room, take two, like, standard letter envelopes, fill each with eight quarters, seal them, write my name and my sister's name on each of them, and hand them out just so he could be a shit about, I gave you a Christmas gift, and you gave me nothing. Oh, God. Middle child behavior. Yeah.

Classic, Todd. Just the worst. Thanks a lot, Todd. Throw him out of the light. Jason, let's hear a reader story from you. you. I claimed a few because I personally do not have any tales of Christmas excitement that I can recall. We have many adventures on other holidays, but for whatever reason, Christmas is free by the book. From Sarah Cannon, Day after Christmas, my seniorish year of college.

We fly from DFW to ATL with the goal of renting a car than driving to final destination in South Carolina. Arrived, they are out of rental cars, like completely out. Not a single company has cars. To my knowledge, we waited in the rental car terminal for roughly the length of World War II. Ended up taking Marta out as far as it would go. Now, you folks who are not from Atlanta, you might assume, Marta being the public transit institution in the city of Atlanta, that, you know, okay, we're talking like pretty far out there. No, we're talking like nine feet in each major cardinal direction, and that is the extent of Marta. It goes like a block in each direction, and that's it.

get in a car so we go back to sarah she takes marta as far as it can go then she takes a taxi to wendy's where we were retrieved by my godfather who drove from south carolina to get us i wanted to i wanted to take the time to plot the map like the closest windies to the the eastern most martha stop i was going to say like we're probably talking marta's bad but i don't go to south carolina miles from the airport here and then we're probably Seriously, probably talking 1% of the way to wherever you're going inside. Hey, I did a little. You have to give me credit.

You literally took a plane, a train, and an automobile to go nine novels into Atlanta. I actually had to do this in the days before GPS. My parents moved while I was at college, and I still found them. And what are you? As opposed to what? Spencer, are you a detective or something? I am. he can echo locate

this man's a fucking bounty hunter he's a giant dolphin I wasn't real sure where they were so they just told me to they just told me to meet them at a waffle house and then I had oh no yeah then they had to pick me up there oh they did they specified which waffle house

kind of okay how many did you go through before you had eliminated two two actually because they were real close that was my bad but yeah I forgot that in Georgia, there's a Waffle House, and then there's usually a Waffle House over there. Can you imagine how pissed Sarah's godfather was? Because he's, it's the day after Christmas.

He's sitting at home being like, cool, people are coming to me. I can just sort of like bask in post-holiday, lazitude. And then you get that phone call that's like, hey, I'm calling you from a Wendy's. You need to drive from South Carolina to this Wendy's. And then back to South Carolina. Hey, Pop, Pop, we're at the Wendy's. Can you come get us? Okay, which one? Oh, it's like 45 feet away from the airport. It's in the airport. Yeah, it's like one stop away from the airport. We're a terminal B. This is where I will defend Marta because it's, you know, it doesn't go real far, but it was not going to take you to the South Carolina border, y'all.

Even Marta was like, I ain't going there. um okay i would like to uh claim the i sort of tried to find a common theme for a lot of the ones that i claimed and they are uh my favorite kind of christmas disaster which is you try to do something cute and it goes terribly fucking wrong this is my favorite of those this is from jim gordon not spelled the way you think i'm on twitter my first christmas my parents art directed the shit out of the presence and tree with the idea of capturing my sense of joy and wonder with their newly purchased first-gen cam quarter oh no after getting everything arranged there was a knock on the door the college-age sons of our neighbors who got a kick out of my dad himself a dormant bro inviting my

folks over for drinks dad stays up until three a m wakes up with a smoking hangover and proceeds to record my entire Christmas morning with no tape in the camera. Yes. My mother, fuming, is forced to put me down for a nap and re-wrap all of the presents for take two. Forced, no, forced is not the forced by her own psychosis. Yes, but, but listen, and I don't want to do the whole, I, I have backtracked on my stance on Christmas, as previously stated on this podcast. I think Christmas is fine and often good, but there are people who are so into it that like, I think everybody knows one person like this mom who's like, we will do Christmas if it kills every one of us. I don't care if we have to spend six days getting it right.

We will fucking do Christmas and you will, I will put you under with an anesthetic just to make sure we get Christmas right. God damn it. I'm going to dip in here with a story about my own mother, who is this person and who I have come to respect in a year since the chip she implanted in my brain exploded at age 25. And now I'm like, oh, oh, you're absolutely right. I had come home. I was the first one in the house at one point during our college years.

It was just going to be my brother and me. and I was the first one home and dropped my bags and was in the living room and mom came through. And I noticed that she had built a pyramid of tangerines and a glass bowl on the coffee table. It was really pretty. It was like, you know, hey, fruit. Your mom won the citrus bowl. That's cool. Yeah.

It was kind of like that. But she had built like this perfect, I guess it wasn't a, no, it wasn't a pyramid. It was four-sided, but it was flat on top. Like a ziggurat? Yeah, yeah. Listen, our house ran on the Hammarobot code. okay so this makes a lot of sense and I noticed it was flat on top and I said you know did I made some comment about did dad come in and swipe the tangerine off the top of the pyramid and she sighs and she goes

no I was taking one last sweep through the house and again this is just me and my brother coming home but you know this is and I don't make fun of this anymore because this is what makes my mother psychologically soothed is by having a place for everything and everything in its place and she says I was doing my final sweep through the house and she says sweep and I'm imagining predator vision right or maybe Terminator vision she has aspects of both and she said I was I was walking towards the table and the tangerine on the top of the pyramid had rolled off and she said as I walked towards it I realized that I was glaring at it as though I could admonish it to leap back up onto the top of the pyramid.

And I said, well, what did you do? And she's like, oh, well, I ate it, of course. I was like, did you eat it's a lesson? Mm-hmm. I was like, did you eat it in front of them? She's like, yeah. Yeah, I did. I'm imagining, by the way, her just biting into it, peel and all.

Yeah. And just like letting the juice drip down her, which she never would have done, just while staring at this pyramid of fruit, daring it to jump out of lime. Parenting the dialogue for the tangerine. Do it. Come on.

To go back to Jim's story very briefly, I would contest, and maybe I'm wrong, that there is no worse hangover than Christmas morning hangover. It is a terrible decision that only gets worse over the course of the day. If your choice is go have fun at a Christmas party on Christmas Eve or stay home and you have chicken noodle soup and go. to bed at 9.30, please pick the soup in the early bed. This is extremely tricky for those of us of the Catholic slash Episcopal

slash Orthodox persuasion who have midnight Christmas services to deal with and then come home and drink after. Yeah, it's bad news bears. Y'all turn it up at midnight Catholic church. That's what happens? Oh, yeah. Well, the idea is the service ends at midnight Yale. Yeah, Catholics have midnight yell.

The idea is that the idea that our church at home is that it like it starts at 10.30 so you are out at midnight, except some years the church has a new music director and he wants the orchestra that somebody has brought into honor their dead mother because usually we have like an oboe or some shit. He brought a 12 piece orchestra with a timpani into the church. And by the way, that means nobody can take communion at the altar rail. Everybody has to take communion in the aisles. Let me tell you who's happy about that. Nobody. And, And sometimes when you say you want the orchestra to play selections from the Messiah starting at 10.30 at night, you don't get out of church until 1245. Y'all, it was a long December for me, let me tell you. He took the patron, gave it to his disciples, and said, take this and get lit. Take this and lean back. Also, they are redecorating a bunch of the interior of the church that looks hideous. except unless they are trying to,

unless those are not really Celtic crosses and an implication that Jesus and his disciples carried throwing stars, in which case, rock on. Spencer. I just want to note I've spent two minutes thinking about how all Aggies are Catholics. There's, listen,

there's a lot of graven idols on both sides. Yeah, except, you know, you have to work a collie in there. Honestly, not just... Wait, is Revely the Pope in this? Yeah, yeah, that's the easy. part. Pope Revely, Pope Revely the knife. Yeah. Yeah. All right. How do we know

Matthews? The halls with bows to collies. Spencer, please pick one. Pick one before I keep punning. I'm going to take Jack of Dan's here because it's Georgia's hell. This specifies that this is Columbus, Georgia, not Columbus, Ohio. I have spent a couple years there and let me tell you. This is Georgia Bama, for those of you who don't know where it is. I have to say Columbus, Georgia and not Columbus, Ohio, because now every Ohio State fan gets to get in the feet fees. Talk about the books!

Talk about the books! We're not going to. But why? Because we're talking about people who won Christmas. To Dow. That's okay. Sometimes you...

You can reach me at Alex Kirchner. Oh, wow. That's just rude. Well, he's already fending him off. He's playing a perfect game of Gallagia out there. I'm just giving him a little target premise. No, Alex will be delighted by this. Oh, yeah.

SEC doesn't want me to have a Nintendo Switch for Christmas. You can only make our boy A.K. stronger. I was 10, and it was our first Christmas in Columbus. It had been a very tough transition to a new town. Columbus sucks. This is true. None of that matters, because on Christmas Day, I watched my dad accidentally shoot himself in the leg with a 45 while attempting to clear a jam.

Now, do you feel better about your children? A little bit. Yeah. He gets better, though. Cracked his femur in half. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Like, for real, his dad could have died.

Wait, so he really had his, why did you brace your 40? So he braced his 40, he had to embrace his 45 directly into his leg. Uh-huh. You, oh, my God. I think, I think there being a bullet in it is the main problem. Awesome. Well, it, hey, it cleared the jam, didn't it? Cracked his femur in half, and we learned that sticking your finger in the hole was a bad idea.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Who's finger? I'm going to go out on a limb here and said sticking your finger in the hole is probably just a bad idea before you do it. Should have seemed like a bad idea. Great news, Holly. It doesn't matter whose finger. Anyone's finger is a bad idea. These aren't specified, by the way, whose fingers these are, right?

But I pretty much figure that putting a finger in the wound is a terrible idea. But fortunately, now that we're down the highway of bad ideas and have passed several exits on that highway, we're about to take another because... Only 20 we're going to talk about muscle discipline, y'all. Because the muscle contractions mean the paramedics cannot get it out, it being a finger, until they knock you out later at the ER. Oh, yeah, he's got sarlack leg. Yeah, so you put it in there, muscle contractions pull up, and then you just have your finger stuck in a hole.

You've created two problems. Yeah. Two problems shooting yourself in the leg. You've become an auriboros. This is a lot better if it's someone else's finger, because now they have to walk along playing the fucking knockout game. We're brothers now. So, yeah, also, by the way, if I have my finger in someone's leg and I can't get it out, sedate me.

I don't care. Hit me with a hammer. Take a blackjack to the back of my skull, please. I don't want to remember any of this. There's a kicker. This was also the year I learned about Santa. I like that it doesn't specify this was the year I learned. Santa is fake because

Oh, you're suggesting it could be that this was the time a 10 year old was like, oh yeah, also Santa's the thing we do at Christmas. That does sound like a thing that somebody's middle brother would say while like solemnly surrounding a hospital bed containing your prone father. I'm picturing like, all right,

so dad's thigh, there's blood geysering to the ceiling or whatever. Well, until he puts his finger in it. Well, and I'm going to go with grandpa. Grandpa comes over and shoves his finger in it because it's what they did in World War I. Routy grandpas.

At that moment, Jacket Dan thinks this is amazing. Santa is real. It's just what I asked for. It's like an insane demented religious vision kind of thing. I asked Santa for this exact scenario and it happened. Not that he wants it. I think it's more just that like, you know, only in a world in which Santa is real could such an insane thing happen.

Yeah, but I like the idea of a 10-year-old sitting in Santa's lap and Santa's like, and what do you want? I want my father to shoot himself in the leg. Okay. So we've turned Jacket Dan into like our arch super villain here. Yeah. It's good to have jobs. There's only once saving grace in this entire story.

And it's the word accidentally. Because the only thing that could have been worse is his dad going, yeah, you know what? I got you for Christmas. Bam! Now watch this! Yeah. Watch this would be the key here.

I also, you could have. accidentally shot your own father in the leg because you think you're never winning a fight with your dad now. Imagine if you crack this fucking famer. We were fighting, we were fighting over a Denver Nugget shirt. It's like a fall. It was a vintage matamba. I keep pulling stories out of the depths, but as we are talking about dad fighting, I am reminded of a story I heard from someone else over Christmas break while I was back in my hometown. We all love the series on Friend of program Bomani's radio show about the time you tried to fight dad and how it always goes well but I heard over Christmas break maybe the saddest one of these I've ever heard which is a buddy of

mine who's extremely tall you know fairly fairly well built you know he's he's not a he's not ripped but he's not a skinny dude however he has a dad who I actually don't know if he's if he's armed just Army Army or some kind of special forces situation but he's got a jacked military dad, right? And like a very Larry Fedora, but the troops type dad. And apparently at one point in high school, my buddy, who I'm going to call Nate, because that's his name, attempted to swing on his dad. And his dad, he says, stepped backwards out of the reach of the punch, looked at him for a second, and just rolled his eyes and turned his back on him and walked away, which is, I think, worse than getting your ass kicked.

He was like, he said he looked mad for a second and then was just like, oh, God. You're not even worth it. No, he just, and also he turned his back on him while his son was in a physical rage and just ambled off down the trice. Damn. Oh, families are great, man. Damn. Yeah, you're his son forever. Oh, clearly.

That's how it works. Holly, you want to pick one? Yeah, yeah. Let's, oh, I picked out my favorite one. I, too, look for themes. And in this one, that theme was Destin, Florida. One Christmas, says Rear, Leah Goldman 91. The whole family was down in Destin, Florida.

Mom and her siblings spent all day making an elaborate Christmas dinner. See some people in Florida celebrate, Ryan. It's okay. Oh, no, wait. The problem is that you're Californian, isn't it? Yes, correct. That kind of heathen. All right. We all sat down to dig in, and she takes one bite and immediately starts choking. She swallowed a grouper bone, and it got stuck in her throat.

The closest hospital was like a half an hour from Destin back then. My aunt took the kids into a bedroom because they didn't know if my mom would die waiting on the ambulance. She ended up being fine, but this is what got me. we still have that damn group or bone. Leah, you need to write us back because I need to know in what situation you still have that group or bone. Christmas ornament, right? That's the first thing I thought of.

I was like, did you wrap this in tinsel and hang it from a tree? Is it floating in a mason jar with an unidentified liquid in a curio cabinet? Does it have its own pin spot in your family's Christmas China cabinet? Tell me, send us a photo. I need to know how you store these bones. Also, if you guys have stories of trauma trophies, this is one of my favorite things of people who choose to keep, you know, teeth that they've lost in a fight and whatnot.

But if you have trauma trophy stories, please send them to me because I need to know more about what has become of this bone that almost took down your mom. So here is my hope. My hope is that in Leah's family, there is now a holiday tradition. where one random person in the family gets the grouper bone as their Christmas gift and their only Christmas gift. And the idea is your gift this year is that you're still alive. You shouldn't ask for anything else, no toys, no clothes, no gift cards, nothing. You get the grouper bone as a reminder that you persist. It's very bright. Brian, now you're East Tennessee. Yeah. Do you have to

try and eat it? Yeah, if you were, I was going to say the Floridian thing, the Floridian thing would be to try and best that bone in single combat every year. I got this. The Florida thing is like, grouper, huh? All right, I know. That's good. Yeah, I can do that. Christmas grouper, though.

Okay, I have another attempt at cuteness. This is from Evan Sacks. We have columns on our front porch that my parents wrap garland around each December. They would trade off standing on the ladder, wrapping it around, while the other held the ladder steady. Oh, boy. one year my mom noticed a bird's nest and told my dad to go get a flashlight to see if there were any baby birds she shines the light and before she can see any birds a squirrel jumps out at her she falls off the ladder and into the bushes narrowly missing the concrete porch dad can only laugh are these Auburn fans

this might be Auburn fans my wife fell down a cliff all that all dads are uh all dads are wife guys aren't they yeah uh joseph was the original wife guy if you think about it wow my theme was uh my theme was joseph the most wife guy or was abraham the most wife abraham was very wife guy i mean that's like joseph was incredibly wife guy this is what i'm saying are we if we were doing like a biblical wife guy off do you want wife guy in terms of the quality of your wife guyness, Joseph, or the quantity of your wife guineas, Abraham.

You don't want a lot. Was Samson the first cuck? Folks, Ryan Nanny is actually our boss. My theme is derelict fathers and that's no reason. Right, what you know.

So the theme continues here with at J.B. Anderson CPA. Glad to see you've made something important out of yourself, J.B. What? He's a CPA. No, that last name is Unkpa. Unkpa? Okay. Say hello to the entire Onkpa family for me.

They're all CPAs, coincidentally. It's wild. Oh, the Charleston unkpa's. They're not received. he says as a child of divorce christmas with my father was always different strong lead we'd celebrate late or without much planning a co-worker of his would drive us several hours to meet him somewhere in the middle of state i like i need more about this that makes it sound like you're constantly doing a hostage exchange

on christmas fucking situation hey mary hey hey we're getting together for christmas no cops also Why was the co-worker several hours away? Never mind. Put this hood over. You can't see anything. This is like a Christmas fox chicken roboat problem. Fucking when you get there, like, sit on a park bench holding a newspaper, you will be contacted by a man in an overcoat. It will not be your father.

Why do we exchange gifts by Dead Drop? More like Dad Drop. One year we celebrated on New Year's Day. and had a fire going as open presence. House caught on fire, chimney specifically. How the fuck does a chimney catch on fire? Pretty common, actually, yeah. Poor chimney maintenance.

Yeah, for chimney maintenance. It's very common. So when you don't act like when you don't get up in there and empty the thing up there. Correct. Really what he's talking about here is a fire contained within the chimney. Like if you have a bunch of birds

or, in our case one year, raccoons, building a habitat above the closed was the flu? Above the closed chimney flu. Well, raccoons stuck in the chimney, that's called Christmas feast. Oh, yeah. That's a roast. You think the raccoons, when the smoke started, were like, ooh, aromatherapy. Oh, no!

No. First fire of the new year and the TV crew seemingly got there at the same time as the fire trucks. One year, he failed to put tags on our presents. Everyone opened randomly, but Love that gift? Sorry, that's for your brother. Not sure how Santa Magic wasn't spoiled when I was little,

because Santa was very negligent. Only topped by the year he had no time to wrap anything. So we alternated putting paper bags over our heads to open. So we had that last sentence again. We alternated putting paper bags over our heads to, oh, man. Yeah, again, I think your father. Just get gift bags, dude. I think your father was a spy

because you had to meet him at undisclosed locations. You had to put a bag over your head. Yeah. Is this Fargo Season 4? Yeah, didn't put tags on the presents because you can't leave personal names because he doesn't want you to get hurt by the work

that he does, right? No one was here. No one was here. No one was here. I'm not related to anybody. Merry Christmas, Dad. I'm Walter this year, and we've never met. I love him. the paper bags over the heads part because it's like these these items that we are exchanging these aren't the real gifts the real gifts are your heads that's the things we will unwrap together look at that you got a head wait right ryan there's a beautiful face is the greatest

gift i've ever seen ryan there's a story about heads in here that i think you wanted to tell is is there yeah do you want to go to j t dater's story yeah okay this is this is a this is a good show This is from J.T. Gator 813. Family made elaborate, personalized gingerbread people for each member of the family to hang on the tree Christmas Eve. Again, just trying the cutest shit in the world. I love it. I love the ambition. I love the like, yes, we're going to do this thing.

It's going to be a special heartwarming memory. Here is how that memory goes. Cookies were insufficiently cooled and we awoke to personalized, disembodied heads hanging from the tree and severed gingerbread bodies around it. Fuck yes. I love when cute Christmas shit goes wrong because it goes, it turns so dark and so wrong immediately. And it's like,

it's the best way that, that a warm and tender moment can just become fucking, like, like, hilariously trashy. Warm and tender, like a freshly baked gingerbread man. The problem is they were not warm and they were too warm. Yeah, too tender. But a body's not cold.

there's another chimney story in here that I would like to get at from Twitter John Sigler mom noticed weird noises coming from the chimney a few days before Christmas oh this has happened in my house dad denied any pranks which was our first suspicion so he opened the baffler and put a Tupperware in there to catch one of the chimney swifts we knew nested up there note to city folks those are birds figuring that one had fallen. On Christmas morning, someone assigned this story to me, I haven't read it yet. On Christmas morning, we had forgotten about the chimney until a fully grown barn owl fell down, covered in soot, and mad as hell. It was blinded by the lights and started to fly around.

And when my mom thought to turn off the ceiling fans, dad froze and went on to himself about how beautiful the owl was. I love this. I love the dad paralyzed in the corner, waxing about the beauty of nature, while my six-four, 350-pound uncle tried to hide behind the couch, the rare unrouty uncle. My mom ran to get a broom while I ducked behind the corner. The owl landed on my uncle's neck. dad urged him not to move and kept saying how cool this was mom returned with a broom which she poked at the owl until it hopped off she then stepped to the living room door to let it out it flew away shrieking we all kind of laughed nervously while my uncle left and went to vicksburg and didn't come back for a few years he still gets real disturbed

The Vicksburg D. Owling program. The owl followed imaginary jail rules. It walked into the yard and said, I got to fight the biggest guy here. But you know what doesn't happen in jail is some other inmate being like, wow, what a beautiful inmate. So cool.

So cool, man. Disagree there, pal. I look bad. Every good jailhouse has a cold. And large ass still. There's a beautiful creature on. this is also a good swerve for us because while as usual the mom is running around trying to solve problems while the men folk are useless it's not because they cause the problem themselves they're just paralyzed by the beauty and or terror of nature i haven't really felt seen in this entire series of stories until i got to this dad that's exactly what i would do holly i assigned this one to you and i think i think it's clear why appreciate you you're welcome um all right i want to do a quick grandfather one

This is from our buddy Matt Barry O'5 on Twitter. Grandfather received a massaging chair back. He accidentally threw it in the burn barrel with the wrapping paper. What? Hold on. Then angrily tried to return it to Target, claiming they'd sold an empty box despite photographic evidence of him holding it when he opened it. What a fucking fraudulent flex.

What part of Florida is this person from? Feeling like lutes. Oh, this is a Georgian. Okay, I'll accept that. Yeah, this is, man, I really feel for the target employee who had to have this conversation with this angry lying grandpa. Oh, man, I bet they do this a lot. Yeah. There was nothing in here.

It definitely isn't in a fire pit somewhere. But you claim that. I'm going to go ahead and just say that this happened in Swainsborough. Yeah. Okay. I got some more dad content. Great. Yeah, yeah.

Bring it. From Justin Lewis 1125. Dad insisted on driving to family friend's house near the top of a mountain in a snowstorm over mom's objections. It's always the, so the snow itself isn't the real obstacle. The real obstacle is, of course, mom's objections. Dad puts the truck in a ditch once and knocks out a power box another time, but eventually makes it. We have to leave 20 minutes later to save another family from the ditch that their dad has just put them in trying to get to the same house. Mom still brings it up to this day.

Man. Just a never-ending series of dads, like later on in the night. It's like, oh, no, Dad 7 is in the ditch. I like that makes it like a call sign. Like there's a whole X-Wing squadron. Dad seven standing by. Dad leader down. No, you joke.

But my sister at one point lived up in Hall County. They lived up on a couple of hills. And one day when it iced over, I was over there and just kind of was stuck, right? You're just like, I can't go anywhere. You know, we're just going to sit here for a minute because we're sensible. And we started to hear like, boom. A couple of minutes. pass. Boom. So I walk about like a block and a half down to the entry of the subdivision and there

are people gradually and slowly piling their cars trying to exit the subdivision into the same ditch. When I got there, there were three cars in the ditch. When I left, there were eight. And there are people at the bottom sitting there looking at the top going, don't do it. Don't. Just don't. and at the top somebody behind the wheel going you know nobody makes me bleed my own blood that's not why I bought a Tahoe

going down of those eight drivers how many were men eight eight six wow okay six all right the woman was the funniest though because all the dudes had this look of grim determination on their face like

dammit I'm just going to ride this I could do it I'm better than they are like even when they realized it going sideways, they were like, you know what? I bought this ticket. I'm going to take this right. And the women were like, this didn't work out the way I thought it would. How? How? And I love that because they believed there was a better world where they could have made this, whereas the guys were like, well, there's life again. Dad's, dads think they can drive through anything. It's really amazing. Like, if when Vesuvius erupted, there had been cars at the time, there would have been

Greek dad's been like, we can make it through it. Hey, hey, listen, you just got to, you just got to, like, if it starts the fish tail, it's no problem. You just got to know how to handle it. Yeah, they're just going to quote, like, three or four little simple rules. Use your handbrake and all that type of shit.

Yeah, when the lava starts to hit the tire, just put it in neutral. You know, buddy, my, you got through lava. He said, thing was, you'd always want to put a lot of weight on the back wheel. Yeah. We should make this an annual feast day, the uncles of Pompeii.

Put a couple of cinder blocks in the back of that chariot. You're going to skate right through Herculane. Hey, hey, don't worry. They told you to put chains on the tires for lava. I got a two by four in the back. We can always get it out if we need to. Don't worry about it. I want to say this. Follow me if they're telling you that.

I want to say this, by the way, that our grandfather from Swainsborough who attempted to return that. I theorized that he has another child who has responded to us in at young Adderall because his Christmas story is this. It's not in the grid, but I think it's related. I think this is the same man, and you'll see why. At Young Adderall says, Jack Russell got into a fight and cut his ear.

Grandpa tried unsuccessfully to cauterize it with a road flare. No. Wait, what do you mean unsuccessfully? Dot, dot, dot, dot. In front of entire family. Hell yeah. Listen, sometimes uncles become grandpas too. I love that. So like the road flare, designed to say like, here it is. You took that and you jammed it in there because there it is. It's right there. Also, same grandfather from at tuck point zero one year in middle of opening

gifts. A red squirrel appeared on my grandpa's porch. He stood up and muttered something. Never a good sign. He walked over to the closet and proceeded to emerge from the closet with a gun and then he sat down and loaded. My mom got up and yelled, Dad, no! As he opened the window, miraculously he stopped, but me and my cousin's witness attempted squirrel murder, which was only stopped by mom's timely yelling. To clarify, this wasn't like a handgun. It was a full rifle. So the dude just starts loading a rifle because there's one red squirrel.

I contend, same guy. So for apparently about 500 years, it was thought that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that demolished, there's no other word for it, the uncles of Pompeii, occurred in the last week of August. However, in October 2018, there was apparently an inscription uncovered, which coupled with several other pieces of evidence, like the clothes and the fossilized foods that they found in people's and people's baskets and whatnot, indicated that the

eruption actually took place in late October or early November. I think that this henceforth should be like on the on the last you know or maybe maybe the the first weekend in November we we make the feast of the Pompeii uncles and this is when all your uncles need to get all of their holiday rowdiness out to clear the way for a peaceful Thanksgiving Hanukkah what you are describing is the Florida Georgia game that's how do you know that's where I was going how'd you know that's where I was going with this listen the the original world's largest out the original Jacksonville, Vesuvius.

A bunch of uncles looking each other like, so what route do you take through the lava? Because I usually cut through to, you know, to get there about four minutes faster. I wouldn't do that, Red. Oki-Fanokey does sound kind of Italian. I'm much better uncle than you. Oki-Finocchio. Welcome to my home. It's the Jackson Villa.

No. No. Okay. I'm going to pull another reader story as we are winding down here because it leads directly to my second Christmas story. This is not a real disaster, but it does involve gravy. So I'm going to use it as an on-ramp. Thank you, Twitter user of the kilo G. I see what you put down there. I met my now-wife's family for the first time at our holiday dinner. Dinner is served buffet style, so I load up my plate and get to the end of the line and see a gravy boat with very dark gravy. I figure I don't know her mom's cooking. So I apply the gravy to, man, she made the gravy too. This is your first error. So I apply the gravy to my turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. I get to the table, take a bite to discover that the dark substance was not, in fact, gravy.

Instead, it was the chocolate glaze for dessert. Now, chocolate gravy does exist. I don't know where you are from, KiloG, and where your family is from, but chocolate gravy is a thing, however, it is, yes, more of a breakfast thing, over biscuits. This was 12 years ago. says, and I still get shit about it during literally every family gathering. I am going to tell

the gravy story now for those of you who've never heard it. We now store whisks in my family balloon side up in their canister under the sink, which really takes a lot of the drama out. I've noticed as I went home this year. But when I was

I'm relating this via my mother because I'm too young to really remember this. I was older than a toddler, but too young to really participate in the cover-up, the great gravy cover-up of 1980, whatever, which is when we had a very rare large family gathering at our house over Christmas, both sets of grandparents, my mom's folks up from Florida,

and my dad's parents in from the holler. And my mother was cooking, and she was making gravy on the stove top, everything else was ready. there's a pocket door between the kitchen and the dining room in my parents' house. And I remember the pocket door was open and I could see the table. And I was in the kitchen with my mom and both my dad's mom and my mom's dad's wife. And my aunt Mothman, who weirdly did not play a part in this disaster. We were mere spectators.

As my mom, sighing that there were lumps in the gravy, went under the kitchen sink where her cooking utensils are stored in a large canister and pulled out a balloon whisk that only as we were putting it into the gravy pot did we all notice at the same time contained an enormous desiccated camel cricket. I don't really remember anything that happened in the next five minutes except for two things. I remember the noise that the cricket made as it disintegrated into dust upon hitting the hot gravy which was like a and then i remember the scorpion king emerging no listen it sounded like emotep getting blown away in the scorpion king's wind and i remember oh god and i remember my grandmother and we all we all just stood there for a second

and i remember my grandmother turning to my mother and saying shut the door and my aunt pulled the door shut and my grandmother that turns back around and she points at my mother this is the only other thing I remember and she goes stir and my mother whisked the pieces of dead cricket into the gravy and dinner was served just a few minutes later none of the women ate gravy and none of the men noticed and we have not made gravy in our house for a holiday dinner sense. So I have a follow-up question. Yes. At what point, because you've told this story... Yes, this was my original kitchen disaster story. At what point were the men in the family brought into the light? This was, it would have been at least 10 years later. Wow. It came up when, oh, I want to say it came up when my, no, it was

actually closer to 20 years later because this came up when my oh man i was going to see how many people in that room died not knowing and it was several um when my when my grandmother uh was dying uh of breast cancer when i was in college uh my my job one summer uh was just to come home and help out and i drove her back and forth to her treatments and sat with her and just like served as her companion throughout that summer. This is a great way to get real family, real good family gossip, by the way. If you, if you have a relative who's going through some intense medical treatments, the painkillers make them real, make them kind of loopy. And in my case, you get lots of good family shit. So, you know, I know whose husband was a no good son of a bitch

and who's up with whom. And my favorite lesson from this time was my, my grandmother, gripping my hand and telling me that, you know, when she was young, everybody was sleeping with everybody, just like today. They just didn't talk about it on television. So that was a good lesson. But I don't, I was not around for whenever this reveal happened, but it was after at least two of the men at that table had died. It's better that way.

Yeah. This dies with us. Listen, nobody keeps a secret. Nobody holds things close in their heart and locked in their heart like ants. answer the. Antis are the opposite of uncles in this fashion. I want to leapfrog off that to tell a short mom submission and then Jason has one more excellent dad submission. The mom one comes from Ollie McClellan on Twitter and I think it speaks to the aforementioned person who will would rather die than let Christmas not happen. My mom broke her back on December 23rd

screwing a light bulb into a chandelier while standing on the dining room table. Good God. She still pulled off Christmas dinner for about 25 people without a hitch two days later. Of course she did. It's fine. It's fine. Like Batman, Bruce Wayne pulling himself out of the pit to go back to Gotham, Christmas moms think that shit is weak.

Think he took too fucking long and want to know why he didn't stop to get stocking stuff on the way back, Bruce. If Batman's mother had leaned into the pit, she would have been like, why did we, why do we fall down, Bruce? And Bruce would have been like, so we can get back up again. And Batman's mom would have been like, no, because these Brussels sprouts are going to fucking chop themselves. Now get at it.

Yeah, number four, Michael Jordan Flew game. Number three, video game. Greg Jennings taking the team on his back. Number two, Terrell Owens, getting over 100 yards receiving in the Super Bowl and a broken leg. Number one, Ollie McLeodlet's mom. Yeah, like, you could make a credible Batman origin story where he's... His mom is dying in the snow of the alley, of crime alley, and whispering, like, it's okay, it's December 28th. And I've already got next Christmas already lined up.

Fuckface. The gift tags are all on the hanging hook shelf inside of the closet under the stairs. Not the shelf with the plastic lid, the shelf with the fold over linen top. I know you're not going to put the holiday table runner on the dining table, and I hate you for it. Man, Batman would be the shortest comic strip in the world because Gotham would be back in order like that. Martha Wayne would have had that shit on lock.

This is why they always have to kill Batman's parents in the beginning, because if you just kill, like, if you just kill mom, everything falls apart immediately and it's without recovery. If you kill just, Thomas Wayne, Martha Wayne's just going to run shit fine. You have to lose the mom and the dad pillars in order to fuel Batman's life as a, I don't know, a rich dude wearing karate pajamas. There's an alternate history, by the way, where the Wayne family just becomes succession, right? But they aren't killed. Instead of becoming a vigilante, Bruce Wayne just becomes

like... This is Bruce's brother, Kevin Wayne. Yeah. Kevin really wants to to run the business but not too much of it um jason do you want to do your final dad submission oh that's a good one final dad content possibly from for now subscriber bird teeth oh that's a good one to go out our dad always gave us somewhat dull bucknives when we turned eight years old as a Christmas gift hey which real quick reader which word do you think was important in that sentence. I think it's the silent parenthetical that, hey, Spencer, at least I didn't

give your kids knives. So what's the tradition is, is when each child turns eight, they receive a somewhat dull buck knife. The spreadsheet just turned green, so I lost track of which one I was looking at. Sorry. Okay, got it now. No, I'm good now. I've attained

visual. My youngest, you can re-green it if you want. My youngest brother got his back in 2009. We were then turned loose to play with our toys while our parents opened their own gifts for each other. I assume these were also knives. As they tell his family, dad from the balcony, where they see my youngest brother standing naked and soaking wet with a bloody left hand, normal. He had cut himself almost immediately with the knife, chose to take a shower to clean up the blood, because that's the most important part, the blood

that's already out. This is a mama's boy in a good way. And when that didn't stop the bleeding, he went to the balcony because you know you're supposed to raise a wound you know you're supposed to elevate the wound does that mean above your heart no show the crowd it it means you want to get the wound as high as possible if you're able to go to space great that's why that attitude that's why that dad was trying to drive up that snowy mountain in case anyone got cut yeah yeah that's why no one ever dies on mount Everest. The soaking wet,

bloody hand boy has since had three. Other ER-worthy knife slash axe related. What age did you get a somewhat dull axe in this household? Nine.

Nine. Okay. Now, this is some Johnny Tremaine shit. You are five. You'll receive the somewhat rusty chainsaw. I like that in this family, the children are treated like they are

new players in a video game where it's like okay here's your starter kit you start with rust with dull somewhat dull buck knife it does two hit points of damage go out into the world and find a better weapon you you've unlocked level eight is what happens also it does two hit points of damage to everyone spencer you said you had a capper i do it's very simple on the first day of christmas my true love gave to from Alan Holcomb, aka at Datta Raine. Two words, Christmas lice. Good night, everybody. Christmas lice are here.

I'm in my ear. That's why Charlie Brown doesn't have any fucking hair. Smart.