All I want for Christmas is Taylor Swift and Lady GaGa to get in a catfight!

It's weird, I had someone ask me what I wanted for Christmas the other day and I couldn't think of one thing.  I furrowed my brow, I puzzled my puzzler until it was sore and nothing.  Not a day goes by that I'm not thinking of some little thing that I couldn't live without and then when someone asks me flat out:  "Hey buddy, what do you want?"  I have no reply.  Nothing, nada, zilch.  When I was a kid I took the JC Penney catalog and circled every NFL jersey and Bathrobe that I could find, I even got a Cincinnati Bengals robe one year, don't ask me why, maybe I had a thing for orange or the stripes or I thought Kenny Anderson was a great QB, I walked through countless stores with my mom throwing myself at every little cap gun, Lite-Brite, Clue, Operation, Uno and Tri-ominos, there wasn't a Lego set that got past me without a "PLEASE!, I'll be good!"  And Star Wars figures and ships and Incredible Hulk underoos, there was no end to the list of crap I would give my mom and dad to put on my list and then Atari came and the games would range from Kaboom! to Pitfall to even Video Olympics (Yeah, I was the kid that wanted that one)  Hot Wheels, train sets and the 12" GI Joes and even Kiss dolls.  I could give you an answer for the question what do you want for Christmas? all the time.  I could start giving you answers to that question on December 26th for next year.  But nowadays when someone asks me what it is that I want?  I hem, I haw, I think and nothing comes immediately to mind....  So here, in this year where I turn 40 I will give you my non-kid Christmas wish list....in no particular order

1.  A long date alone with my wife perhaps 3 days.
2.  For my muscles and joints to get on board with the "think younger" program.
3.  An uninterupted 8 hours of sleep.
4.  More time, just an extra 4 to 17 minutes in the day.
5.  To see friends more often.
6.  clear roads for safe travel.
7.  Health to my friends and family.
8.  The Tigers to go to and win the World Series.
9.  To see a "catfight" break out between Taylor Swift and Lady GaGa during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.
10.  A Cincinnati Bengals bathrobe.

That should about cover it.  I think the reason that it is harder to come up with things that you want now is that you are A) Either completely content in your life. (haha)  or B)  You realize that Christmas is, was and should always be a wonderful time for kids. 

It is a time to believe in magic, whimsy and and mysticism whether it's the bambino in the barn or the fat guy at the pole; these are stories that children identify with because they can feel and anticipate the magic of the season they know that it means gifts will appear and people will spend time with their loved ones.  Just because we understand that the magic isn't real anymore, the wonderment in their eyes still is.  We are able to live that magic through them and that is all I really need for Christmas, that and these ten things I mentioned above. 

As adults we are in touch with too many harsh realities of life to get lost in the malaise of what we "want for Christmas" some of us want jobs or better ones, others want their loved ones or for themselves to break an addiction, others want cancer to leave their family alone, or they just want the pain to end for someone they love.  But that is not something you can put on a list as an adult but what you can do is find that special moment whether it's Christmas morning when they run to the tree or on Christmas evening when Grandma brings out the pie or when they see Santa at the mall. Look at your child...  As an adult with all the bills, aches, pains and stress you need to get lost in that small pocket of hope and wonderment in your kid's eyes and escape for just a moment and remember what December was like when you were 7 and all that mattered was what you circled in a catolog or wrote on a piece of paper addressed to the fat man and that will be a gift to you!  The "Oh My goodness" moment. 

(Unless you didn't find that gift or they were out of them and all you have is a rain check and then you're screwed because no hope and wonderment ever resulted in the eyes oif a kid looking at a rain check, but you know what I mean.  Merry Christmas!)

Impatience

Impatience may be the worst emotion or idiosyncrancy a person can have.  It can cause you to behave in very adverse ways toward the people you love and cause a lot of harm to that realtionship.  I am very impatient with my children at times and say things that I would normally never say to them or any other person in my life but given the circumstances of my impatience I can't seem to find the self-control to hold back, I immediately open mouth and insert foot, which is a terrible idiom because if I did indeed insert my foot, the foot would have kept the shitty thing I just said to my kid inside my mouth.

 I had a bad parenting moment today with my 11 year old son Seth and to make matters worse, it was public.  I misunderstood where he was being picked up and what he had to where and how long he would be gone and... well let's just put it this way, i missed all the memos on his agenda for the day and now in the span of about seven minutes I had to make it all happen and when i received the phone call to tell me where he was to be dropped off, i was in my underwear prepared to take a quick shower; the shower never happened and by the time I picked him up I was down to having about two minutes left on the clock before I had to have him  to another locale and he informed me he wanted to change his clothes, so i took him back into the building I was picking up from (church) and threw his clean clothes on the bathroom floor and yelled:  "Get dressed!" this with a bunch of members of church walking by and witnessing my behavior.  First of all I don't care what any of them think, I care about what the kid in the bathroom thinks and I know that I have just scared him and embarrassed him severely.  he doesn't deserve that, he's a great kid, he does everything we ask of him, gets good grades, treats us with respect and is a great big brother to Sam and because I can't take a little curve ball in my schedule I took it out on him.  It wasn't fair and I told him immediately that it wasn't fair, it wasn't his fault and that I loved him.  He forgave me.  But when I picked him up many hours later at the same rendevous point: I apologized again and tried to make him realize that I understood what i did to him was wrong ands that I would try to nver do it again.  "I know, Dad, I know."  What he knows truly is that I will get impatient again, i will be a dick again and I will apologize again.  But I'm trying son, I'm trying and I love you so much.