Christmas in Jail

Christmas parody letter

Merry Christmas:

So this is Christmas? It looks like we’ll have a last minute visit from Jack Frost & a white Christmas after all. Well, it’s been a banner year here at the old Guy home. I’ve been busy in college. What, you say? An old guy like you in school? I’m studying for my, uhm…P.h.D. Liana has also been in college & getting all A’s. She has been keeping busy with the Knitting for Jesus group at Church, the Yoga & Pilates for Jesus Women’s Ministry & the Christian Women’s Organization to Pray for the Conversion of Barrack Obama. She’s been as busy as fecund rabbits – what, with church bake sales, giving clothes to the poor people so they can find jobs like the rest of us, toys to the poor kids & all those august activities, typical of the noblese oblige or white woman’s burden, whatever you want to call it.

Sam has been receiving high marks (even higher than the stretch marks of a woman who has birthed many children.) Young Samuel is a highly motivated second grader thinking about college, a career path & investing in the stock market. Liana & I have been like taxi drivers, shuttling him to Cub Scouts, wrestling practice, the art club, French lessons, Cello lessons & 4-H, from which he plans to show a deep, wide, juicy hog at the fair next spring while we all eat Cotton Candy, Kettle Corn, caramel popcorn. Oh, don’t get me started on food. I probably added a few inches to that spare tire above my waist this holiday season and I should join the Take off the Pounds Club at the YMCA. You know they have everything for young men to enjoy. What, you say? Did I forget our little princess Kenzie, Miss Superdiva herself. She’s our little ballerina, taking lessons from our local YMCA branch. Our little starlette recently turned in a fine performance at the First Baptist Church’s Pre-school concert. We’re confident she will outgrow the crude trick she calls “talking from my butt.”

And in other news, Liana’s uncle Clyde died from the ravaging cancer that had been eating his insides with the inexorable force of a dozen daggers stabbing incessantly into one’s guts and innards. It’s kind of like that scene from the HBO mini-series “Rome” where Brutus & the boys thrust their knives into Caesar, carving him as one would a turkey for Christmas dinner.

For vacation last summer, I took the family to the San Quentin Prison Museum, penal institution, immortalized by Johnny Cash. We enjoyed a lazy romp through history, much like the six inmates as they took that long last walk to the steps of San Quentin’s gas chamber in 1937 after stabbing Folsom Prison warden Clarence Larkin. We spent the night in a rustic Montana hotel. Unfortunately, the skeleton key we were given would not unlock the door at the end of the long, dark hallway. I sought help from the desk clerk, a woman about 5-foot-two, with a beehive. She explained that you have to take the key “and do a little watussi with it.” Later that summer, we left the kids at grandma’s while I took the little gal for a romantic getaway at a bread & breakfast called Shrute Farms. (Guys, are you taking notes lessons from the King of Romance?) A bearded man named Mose gathered the lain eggs of the chickens and deftly squeezed the teets of cows for the provision of frothy milk. We got the kids again & visited my cousin Peter & his family in Quohog, Rhode Island.

Speaking of family, I cannot let a Christmas go by without writing about Liana’s cousin Nate. He has endured a medical problem concerning his anus. An enema had to be conducted in which a long tube was placed inside Nate’s excretory canal & tentacles of the tube made connections with Nate’s small and large intestines, his colon & rectum. We were discussing all this with Nate last week over a luscious meal of guacamole & green chili at the Green Door & we’re all happy that Nate is doing well.

Liana’s parents have moved into a lovely village, a retirement community inhabited by seniors in cottage-style homes. It’s a serene neighborhood in which the in-laws no longer have to live near the psychotic uncle who keeps a baseball bat in the trunk of his Camry and likes to chase people with screwdrivers. We all think the ol’ uncle has a screw loose (lmao) but that’s what happens when people don’t seek help and prescribed pharmaceuticals.

Well, that’s the Reader’s Digest condensed version of our year. I just want to close this epistle by reminding us of the magic of Christmas, that shines over the world like the light of a star that guided shepherds & wise men to a Podunk little town called Bethlehem a long time ago. As we pass by the smiling shoppers carting treasures at Target, Wal-Mart, Costco, J.C. Penny’s, etc., let us all feel the joy that has bound humble individuals together for over 2,000 years, & let’s remember that we can do anything we want through the power of Christmas. Just be cautious about eating any fruitcake. It doesn’t digest well & has been known to stay lodged inside the bowels of individuals for up to 12 years.

Merry Christmas & God bless us everyone,

J. Guy

P.S. I received an email, saying Barack Obama wants to change our national anthem to that hippie, communist song, “I Want to Teach the World to Sing.” We better pray that doesn’t happen.