I’m not a big fan of Christmas and the holiday season in general. All the pressure to be joyful seems pretty naive if you pay attention to the news. The world is shit, but for one month everyone is supposed to ignore that and hang up shiny decorations and buy presents no one needs. I’d happily skip December altogether if I could.
Still, I have to admit what happened on the train that day did make me smile for a bit.
This group of kids got in our car. The kind of group of kids that normally would make you want to put your eyes down, hide your iPhone, and hope that there wouldn’t be any trouble. But on that day, their hats made us all think they may be different from the kind of group of kids that we normally would have thought.
They wore Santa hats, elf hats, and reindeer horns. They started singing Christmas songs and encouraging people to sing along. And people did. Even me.
Okay, it was a bit fun.
The whole train car was singing and smiling, and the kids even handed out cookies.
“Homemade,” a girl with jingle bells on her reindeer antlers said to me with a smile.
I took two. Well, three.
When I got home I was still smiling and thinking that maybe I shouldn’t be such a humbug all the time. The holidays could be sort of nice.
Then I stopped smiling.
My stomach cramped up. It felt like someone reached inside of me and was crushing my stomach with giant fingers. Suddenly I worried that the bathroom that was just across the room was too far away. Luckily, I made it in time.
I will spare you the details, but let’s say that my time on the toilet was rather explosive. After a while I thought I was fine but then immediately had to return.
Eventually it was over.
As I laid on the couch wondering how I got so sick so quickly I turned on the TV. The local news was on. They were talking about a gang of holiday hoodlums who were pretending to be carolers but were handing out cookies laced with chocolate-flavored laxatives.
Of course.
I fell asleep with my lack of faith in humanity restored.
I hope your holiday isn’t so crappy.
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This is Fiction Friday.
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Kim Z. Dale 