So. Lemme just preface this by saying ... the following is 100 percent fiction. It never happened. It's just a product of my warped sense of humor, And may or may not have been alcohol and/or herbally fueled.
Additionally, the characters are also 100 percent fictional and are based on no one in particular. Except for the Dad. That's 100 percent totally me.
Christmas, 2002
My dad sleeps in the nude. Which, ew.
He's a big man, and like most big men, he's not too fond of tight clothing. And because he's a big man, most of his clothing is tight. So when he gets home from work, church, or anywhere that requires him to wear real clothes with belts and socks and undershirts, the first thing he does is shed them in favor of a graphic tee and shorts.
And I'm talking the FIRST thing. He could have a turtle head poking out or bleeding from the eyes or the house could be on fire, and he'd STILL go change before anything else.
Growing up I remember him sleeping in basketball shorts. Not the 70s-style nut-huggers, but the long-ass past your knees kind made famous by 90s NBA basketball.
If he was at home, he was wearing those shorts. Blue with white stripes down the sides. He'd worn them for so long that the elastic was totally shot, so he had to fish two tied-together shoe laces through the waist for a makeshift tie so they wouldn't fall down.
Mom bought him umpteen different new pair, but he always found his way back to the blue ones. His "TV watching pants" he called them.
For most of my childhood that's what he wore. Until one day he declared. "GOING FORWARD I'LL BE SLEEPING IN THE NUDE. ENTER OUR BEDROOM AT YOUR OWN RISK."
We were probably 14 or 15 at the time. And, of course, ew. With that statement he blessed his two teenage daughters with the mental picture of our him sleeping the way the good Lord intended.
"I've never felt more free that when I'm nekid," he'd say. Again, ew.
Anyway, I was home from college for winter break my freshman year. I was attending Rice University on a basketball scholarship. My older sister was still at home taking a gap year that had stretched into gap year two, working and saving money for whatever it was she wanted to do with her life.
It was Christmas Eve, and we had just gathered around the fire for our annual reading of the original version of Dr. Seuss' The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. And when the Grinch, himself, carved the roast beast, that signaled it was bedtime.
Although we were adults, we still bounded out of bed Christmas morning with eager anticipation. When we were younger we'd pile into bed with mom and dad, and he'd make his usual jokes about it being too early and that Santa probably hasn't even come yet it's so damn early. That was, until, his "I'm sleeping nekid" proclamation. After that we'd bound out of bed with the same eager anticipation, but we'd have to stand at the door of our parents' bedroom and yell at them to get the hell up.
"Dad, I miss piling into bed with you guys on Christmas morning. So, could you maybe wear shorts to bed tonight," I asked him. You don't even have to wear underwear (which, again, ew) I told him. Just shorts.
After bitching and moaning in the hyperbolic manner that he always does, he begrudgingly relented. "Just for one night," he barked, irritated but with a slight upturn of a smile in the corner of his mouth.
Surprisingly, Christmas came just the same - shorts or no shorts. We drank our traditional mimosas, noshed on our traditional chocolate almond croissants and had our usual big time opening presents.
And, we took our traditional after-presents photo. Mom LOVED her Polaroid camera. It was one of the really old ones that folded down to the size of a book. "They're so much more PURE than other cameras," she'd say.
So out came the tripod, and mom snapped the camera in place while we gathered around Dad. Me on one side, my sister on the other. Mom set the timer and rushed over. CLICK. SNAP. BUZZZZZ. And out came our latest Christmas memory captured in its "purest" form.
Mom, dad, his girls and ... HIS BALLS!
If you've ever had a Polaroid, you've experience the joy, and often frustration, of patiently waiting for the while film to clear and the picture come into focus, We often have to do two or three takes, but this time, unfortunately, we got it on the first try.
The image slowly faded into being. First mom smiling widely, then me and my sister draped across dad's shoulders. And then ...
"OH MY GOD DAD ... YOUR BALLS," I cried.
The chaos that ensued was unlike anything I'd experienced. Mom in tears because "dad just ruined Christmas." Dad sitting there amused, "What? What'd I do?" My sister laugh-crying and alternating and between "Eeeeeeww." and "Let me see, let me see!" before melting down from all the commotion.
Everyone scattered, leaving Dad sitting there dumfounded amongst the empty boxes, bags and crumpled tissue paper.
Later on, as mom was reading the paper and dad was napping, I wandered into the front room where everything was still a pristine mess from the "incident" a few hours earlier.
I looked down to see the offending Polaroid there in all its glory. I plucked it from the discarded wrapping paper and looked again. Which, OK - I was looking at my dad's balls. Get over it.
Upon closer inspection, my dad, a known prankster and a master-level dad joke teller who NEVER missed an opportunity to make us cringe , sat there with a familiar slight upturn of a smile in the corner of his mouth, holding up a peace sign with his left hand. And in his right? Holding up his shorts just high enough to let his balls drop out.
I laughed. Harder than I've laughed in a long, long time and thought, "That tracks."
THE END
