The Best of Holiday Stories #2

Hey folks, this is Kevin. On this week's episode of Risk, you'll hear Vin Brew. All of the adults in my family were just standing there silently consoling children while glaring at me with this look in their eyes that very clearly said, What the fuck is wrong with you? Can't you do anything right?

That and more, but before that, don't forget San Francisco! Everyone in or around San Francisco, Risk is coming to San Francisco Sketch Fest on January 22nd. Come on out, January 22nd, 2022, our first live show of the new year, and our first time back at Sketch Fest, since, you know, all the brouhaha. And what a cast this is!

Jonah Ray, Yamanika Saunders, Shalewa Sharp, and Mary Jo Peel. So, that is January 22nd, it's at 7pm at Swedish American Hall. Come on out, you can always get your tickets at risk-show.com slash tour. Did you ever hear about the selfie that solved a murder, or the jury that used a Ouija board to speak to a victim?

If that made you pause, you need to listen to Morning Cup of Murder. I'm Karina Bema Surfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I tell one chilling true crime story tied to that exact day in history. With over 2,500 episodes to binge, you'll never run out of dark stories to start your morning with. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts.

And remember, stay safe. Now here's the show! Hello kids, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, and this is George Shearing behind me now, and we're calling this week's episode Holiday Stories Redux 2.

A rather awkward title, but the whole idea is that this is our second, like, kind of best of. The best of the stories that have been on our Holiday Stories episode, and this one, it's just a great collection. In a little bit, we're going to hear a very beloved story by Elna Baker. Before that, a little something from Vin Brew, but before that, we're going to start with a story that was shared by Brendan J.

Sullivan. I'll tell you, I remember when Brendan came to my apartment to record this story in 2018, and it now feels like that was two decades ago. Here he is now, this is Brendan J. Sullivan, with a story we call A Very Transit Strike Christmas.

So I call my mom, and in the middle of her telling me how excited she is for Christmas, I know I'm about to break her heart by telling her I can't come home this Christmas. I just got a job, and because of that, guess who's stuck? Working Christmas. I was 22 years old, I moved to New York City, I wanted to be a writer, but the only job I could get was in this one restaurant that had a terrible uniform, and it was like 45 minutes each way in the commute.

The restaurant was failing, we were making, like, no money at the time, so it was crazy to be in New York City among all these wealthy people. We're literally staring at Trump Tower from where we are. Now, the only thing I liked about this restaurant was the hostess. I worked on the bar where no one ever came, and she stood directly across from me.

She had big, beautiful curly hair, she was from this big Jamaican family, way out in Canarsie at the end of the L train. I remember the only thing I really said to her at this point was, hey, I really like your hair. And she said to me, oh, I just got it done. And she showed me the part in her hair where someone in her hair salon had sewn in the curly hair to the braids that were close to her scalp.

And I said, oh my god, I thought that was your natural hair. And she said, white people, every single time, you say that word for word. I was thinking about my cousins back home, and my brother and his kids, and how much fun they're going to have. I started feeling sort of like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer when, you know, everybody's having fun without him, that kind of thing.

I had FOMO for Christmas. So I flip on the TV. This is 2005. That's how you got the news.

And I see a Christmas miracle is brewing. Transit travel today here in New York that could ultimately affect millions of commuters. In New York City, bus and subway workers walked off the job early this morning, leaving millions of commuters scrambling for alternative ways to get to work. The New York City Transit Authority is going on a general strike starting the following morning.

There will be no trains, buses, or ferries anywhere in the five boroughs. It was like having an adult snow day. I don't have to go to work anymore. I can't get to the city.

I've got just a few minutes, and if I get to the bus station in time, I'm going to go home, and I'm going to surprise my mom on Christmas. So I go into work to gather my things to get the hell out of there. And my boss says to me, hey, Sullivan, you live in Brooklyn, right? I said, yeah, yeah, shame about that transit strike, hon.

She's like, hey, it's no big deal. I live in Brooklyn, too. So my husband has a car. I'll just come pick you up in the morning when I come in, and then you can work.

You can actually work all the extra shifts for all the people who can't come in this week. Isn't that great? And as I see, everybody else still has that grin on their face. Everybody else who lives outside of the city is still getting out of this place.

And I just stood there, thinking, yeah, great. I'll spend more time with my boss. I'll spend two hours in traffic with her and her husband, and then come in to work two hours early and pick up all these shifts from all these lucky people who are going home for Christmas. They have these smiles that just say, we already know exactly what party we're going to.

We're going to eat the best food. We're going to have the best time without you. That is how all of New York City felt to me at that time. I didn't know anybody.

I had no connections. I didn't get invited to cool parties. I had a terrible job. And everywhere you go, you just see these opulent, beautiful, rich homes, and these people, and these great clothes, and they get invited to these things that you've never heard of.

You know, you couldn't really Google stuff on your phone then, so when someone would say, hey, have you heard of such and such? You'd be like, oh, I only go there on Mondays. And they'd be like, they're not open on Mondays. Everything was like a trap for you to fall in.

So I go back home, and I bump into my neighbor on the way in. He's like, hey. And I was like, hey, how you doing? He's like, look, I'm really trying to get out of town before this transit strike happens.

Hey, are you staying here for Christmas? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I am. And he's like, that's great. I don't know why you think that's great.

Other than that, when you're at the solo on the totem pole in New York, and someone says that's great to you, but the oil was strawberry-scented. So I always knew when this guy pulled up, because it was like he was coming through town, just farting strawberries left and right, and then he parked right in front of our building. I figured, yeah, I'm here, it's Christmas, I'll give you a hand. So as soon as he shuts the door, and he leaves town, I think about, okay, so now I can say at least, you know, I need Tuesday off, because I gotta move this bike for this guy.

And then I realize, he's not gonna know if I just borrow this bike to escape my evil boss. Somewhere between 5 and 8 million people ride the New York City subway every day, and it's all walks of life. You know, New Yorkers are a sympathetic bunch, especially to workers, I would say. But when you hear that, boy, CNN mistreats its workers, and you go, okay, I'm gonna turn on NBC, it's a little different when they say, oh, the MTA mistreats their workers, and you have to say, oh, okay, well, I'll just take the nothing.

There is no other way, and there's zero way to get from Brooklyn, where I lived, into Manhattan. The best they could devise was an agreement with the Taxi and Limousine Commission, where they would have all taxis do a $5 per zone. There were five zones in Manhattan. If you go to the Bronx, it's $5 more dollars.

If you go to Staten Island, it's $5 more dollars. From where I worked to where I needed to get home, it was gonna cost me $70 a day to go to my terrible job. And it was freezing cold outside. People had to wait in these huddles on the curb.

If you were on Broadway, you were in this massive, like, a war zone. People trying to escape. Then you would get in the car. They could just pick up strangers left and right all throughout the city.

So a total stranger who could murder you would get in the car with you, and the next thing they would do is bring you to your home address. Now they knew where you live. So the next morning, there was nothing but traffic from my house in Brooklyn all the way to my job across the bridge into Manhattan. I feel bad for these people and everything, because, of course, I'm a New Yorker, but I was having the time of my life.

I am cruising between cars, just farting strawberries all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge. So I get into my job, and it's like kind of fun, actually, now, because now there's, you know, the snooty French sommeliers, lots of tables, and everybody started pitching in, and if you didn't have everything in your uniform, it was okay today, but, you know, try better tomorrow. At the end of the night, it just kind of slows down. I'm looking at the hostess, and she's got a sad look on her face.

She said, oh, jeez, you know, all my friends are kind of screwed in their holiday shopping. Someone else was like, you know, it's crazy. They're, like, giving away the stuff this week. There's sales left and right.

You know, it's a very corporate mall, but they flip over a holiday announcement to the blank side in the back and just write in Sharpie, like, whole store, 60, 70% off. And she just says, oh, my friends are bugging me all day because they're trying to get me to a Christmas shop for them. There's no way I'm going to be able to, you know, lug all that stuff and my work clothes and get there. And I realized this was my chance.

This was the only situation in my whole life that my strawberry fart in Suzuki was going to be cool. So I turned to the hostess, and I said, hey, if you want to pick up a couple things for your friends, I could give you a ride over there because, parked outside, I have this Suzuki motorbike with a basket that my neighbor lent me for the week. And she's like, oh, my God, could you? Oh, my God.

She starts texting, like, blazing texts, T9 texts, old school style. So before I know it, we are just dashing through the mall. It's four stories, and we're probably the only people shopping. We can just pick up whatever we want, and we load up the bike.

And it is tiny. I mean, it's like you're trying to share a piano bench as you ride through town. So I get on the front. She gets on the back, and I said, all right, hold on tight.

And we whiz downtown, just farting strawberries the whole way. She brings me downtown to this party where everybody's inside, and they've got Christmas cookies and music playing and hot drinks. We bring the presents to them, and it wasn't until I saw the look on everyone's faces. All this time, I just felt sorry for myself.

I don't know anybody. I'm such a loser. I felt like Rudolph, and I was left out of everything. And that was so dumb, because I wasn't Rudolph.

I was Santa Claus. So we go to these parties in these beautiful apartments, and they're saying, the heroes are here. They brought Christmas. Yay!

And there's stuff and cookies in our faces and everything. And then we say, oh, sorry, but we've got to go. We have another delivery. And they're like, oh, stay.

Come back later. We're like, okay, Merry Christmas. So then we go to the next house, and they come in. And this time, she's grabbing my hand to bring me in.

They're like, hey, oh, my God, who's this? I'm like, this is my friend Brendan. He saved Christmas. And one of them says, he's cute.

Oh, my God, I had not once heard that, and the whole time I was wearing a uniform in New York City. So we go to the next house, and the next house, and everyone wants us to come in. They're so happy to see us. They're so grateful.

And they're like, who are you? Why did you even do this for us? You're a total stranger to us. And I just said, you know, it's Christmas.

And they're like, oh, I'm so sweet of you. And what I really couldn't say to them was like, I was just having the best night of my life. Just going house to house, being the hero everywhere I went. This was my best night I ever had in New York City.

We were going to all the coolest parties, and we couldn't stick around long enough because we had other places to go. And I stood around for a few minutes, and I was really happy. I felt like I belonged. Like this was the city where I lived and where I needed to stay.

And that's what they wanted me to do. They said, Brendan, why don't you just come over? You can even just stay on our couch tonight if you want. And I thought about it, and I realized that this was so sweet, but I had to get up early and go open the next morning.

So I put the mug down, and I said to everyone, thank you so much, everybody. This has been the best night of my life, and I want to thank you all for sharing it with me. So have a good party. Merry Transit Strike to all.

And to all a good night. So eight years ago, my wife and I were in a pretty terrible place. More specifically, the Cheesecake Factory at the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey at Christmas time with my entire family. Everyone was already on edge when we got there, because there was an hour-long way to be seated.

My parents are complaining, the music's too loud, and it's too cold, and my sister's three young boys are bouncing off the walls, and my brother's baby's crying, and I'm just trying to put my head down and not draw any attention to myself, which is tough, because my family pretty much thinks everything I do is weird. Like, I ordered fish tacos, and immediately my dad's like, fish tacos, what in the hell? Like, what, you got a diet or something? You know, because unless you're eating half a pound of raw beef for dinner every night, you're a goddamn copy of this pose.

So I'm just trying to power through until it's time to go back to my sister's house for dessert, but at some point, and he winks at me, and I'm like, what the fuck, hide Dingle? Like, is this some kind of old-timey euphemism? Like, is my dad encouraging me to have sex with my wife at my sister's house before everyone gets there? Because that's weird.

So I'm like, huh? Then he goes, the elf, you gotta hide the elf. And he winks at me again, and I'm like, okay, is he calling my dick the elf now? Because that's not okay either.

Like, what's going on here? Is he having an aneurysm? And that's when he explained Elf on the Shelf to me. Yes, Dingle was apparently the name of my sister's kids, Elf on the Shelf.

If you're unfamiliar, like I was, Elf on the Shelf is this relatively new Christmas tradition, where parents tell their kids that this creepy elf doll is spying on them and reporting back to Santa to make sure that they behave, and then whenever the kids go out, the parents hide the elf in a new spot so that when the kids come back, they think that the elf has magically flown itself wherever it ended up. It's weird, but not as weird as the conversation I thought we were having, so I happily agreed to hide Dingle. So my wife and I get to my sister's house before everyone else, because of course we hadn't actually parked that far away. And we walk in, and I see Dingle dangling from the ceiling fan, and I grab him, and I start looking for a hiding spot.

Now, I really want to do a good job of this. and really experience the magic of Christmas again through their eyes. So I'm looking around, and I see these two sconces above the fireplace, and I'm like, ooh, that's perfect. So I put Dingle in one of the sconces, and he gets nice and snug in there, and his arms are hanging over the side, and his smile is all lit up nice, and I actually took a picture of it and put it on Instagram with the caption, Elf on the mother effin' shelf, because Uncle Ben's happy kids, he's with it.

And then I sat on the couch, bashing in the glow of a job well done, waiting for my nephews to burst through the door, which they did a few minutes later. And I watched as my eight-year-old nephew's face turned from excitement to horror as he yelled out, Dingle! No! And that's when I smelled the burning.

Yep, apparently Dingle had flown a little too close to the sun, or the light bulb in this case, and he was on fire. Yeah, I looked over and saw you. It blew my smoke billowing out from the sconce, and I was like, oh, shit. So I jump up, and I run over to try to save Dingle, and that's when my nephew starts screaming at me, Don't touch him!

No, you can't touch him! If you touch him, he's gonna lose his magical powers! And I was like, oh, shit. Uh, uh, uh, okay.

Well, uh, I don't want Dingle to lose his magical powers, certainly. But I also don't want you guys to lose your house, so... Sorry, kids. So I grab Dingle out of the sconce and throw him on the floor, and I just start stomping on him, and the kids start going nuts.

Why, why, why would Dingle do that? Why would he light himself on fire? They think he put himself there. They don't know that I did that.

So to them, Dingle just decided to self-immolate. So they're screaming, and then the rest of my family rushes in to see what all the commotion is, only to find me trampling this poor elf in front of my traumatized nephews in a room full of smoke. So after I finally extinguished Dingle, I shamefully looked up, and all of the adults in my family were just standing there silently consoling children while glaring at me with this look in their eyes that very clearly said, What the fuck is wrong with you? Can't you do anything right?

And the answer is no, apparently. I don't know, man. I thought it was a great hiding spot. Had I known Dingle was so flammable, probably would have made a better choice there.

But, uh, hey, hindsight is 2020, is it not? Anyway, that's the story of how Uncle Vin ruined Christmas. And by now, every holiday season, I just have one phrase floating through my head. Bordingle.

Poor Bordingle. Happy holidays, everybody. I moved to New York to do acting, and I never, I auditioned, I never, I've actually, still, I've never been cast once in anything. But the first acting job I actually was able to get was as a toy demonstrator at FAO Schwartz.

And it's an acting job. You work retail, but basically you have to audition, you read a monologue by Princess Pretty, and then for two weeks, you have to rotate from toy to toy so they have confidence that you can do this. And there's, like, the fun toys, like, I like being on, uh, jewelry, because I would just make earrings for myself all day, and you're supposed to give them to the kids, I never did. Uh, but then there were, like, sucky toys, like, band in the box, where it's, like, maracas, a tambourine, and clapper, and you do that for eight hours.

Worst band ever. Or there was a toy veterinarian kit where you have, like, a stuffed animal, dog, and you have to interrupt families as they go through the store, and you're like, Spot is sick. Can you help me figure out what's wrong with Spot? Which is, like, you know, basically, like, you and your family want to be left alone, but I'm an actor.

Mortifying. Uh, but after two weeks, I got assigned to the most high profile of the toys. It was the Lee Middleton doll collection. And I don't know if any of you have seen these dolls, but basically, they're weighted in the head and the bottom so that they flop like newborn babies.

And it's so creepy. And I worked on the second floor in the adoption center, which was this cottage that they built, and there were all these incubators and incubators of the babies, and there was a white picket fence around it and two rocking chairs. And a typical day of work would go as follows. You know, parents and their children would look at these dolls, and then if they were serious about adoption, we would open the white picket fence and escort the prospective parent, usually like a seven-year-old girl, into one of the rocking chairs, and we had to conduct an adoption interview.

And again, I'm in, like, a nurse's uniform with a whole, you know, everything. And it would begin, uh, do you promise to love and care for this baby? Will you read to the baby? Will you change the baby cipher?

And the little girls would always answer, you know, yes. And then you would get to the last question, what would you like to name the baby? And it was always like, you know, Princess Tiffany of very flower land. And you would write that on a birth certificate and hand it to the parent and then say, now all you have to do is pay the adoption fee.

Wink, wink, which was like $120. And, you know, we were instructed not to use, you couldn't say purchase or cost or buy, you know, because that would break the illusion of the world. And the other thing that, you know, typically when you get slow at work, you can talk with your co-workers, I work with three other nurses, but that would also break the illusion of the world. So if we weren't working with a customer, we had to always be holding, rocking, or bouncing the display baby doll.

The display baby doll was on display for a reason. Something horrible happened in the factory on the day of its conception. Its head weighed five pounds more than all the other baby's heads. So you would pick it up and its head would just flop back violently.

And its hands had been molded together so it looked like it had slippers. So you pick it up, the head would flop back and the slippers would fly up. And it looked like a tabloid monster baby, which is how we called it Nubbins. And because Nubbins wasn't up for adoption, he didn't even have an incubator, he was kept in a cupboard, which was like so disturbing because he looked realistically dead.

He just opened the cupboard and he was like, downward dog dead baby. You know, just scoop him up and pretend that you cared for him. So these dolls were really expensive. So for most of September, October, we weren't really selling them, which meant that we spent a lot of time holding, rocking, and bouncing baby nubbins.

So much time that, like, you kind of start to resent. I would complain of lower back pain. So us nurses, we invented a game. And the object of the game was to try to get another girl to break character by doing something horrible to baby nubbins.

So, like, you know, I would open all the drawers and rock Nubbins' head into the jagged edges while, like, humming a lullaby. Or the best would be, like, there'd be a whole group of people there and you really have to, you scoop up the baby and really make it look like it's real, you know, burp it. And then at just the right moment, you drop the baby. Everyone knows it's not real, but they still are like, gasp.

So, I mean, we would just spend all day doing horrible things to Nubbins. And then, one day, it was right after Thanksgiving, everything changed. Do you guys know that there's that show, Rich Girls? It was, like, the first stupid reality show about rich children.

Tommy Hilfiger's daughter was in it. But they came to F.L. Schwartz and they adopted a baby. Outside on the street of people waiting to adopt.

And, you know, no more wrist play, no more braids. It was, like, you know, adoptions left and right. And within one week, we sold out of all of the white babies. And it was three weeks until Christmas.

The babies were already on back order. So, there was no way to get any more white babies. All we had left were incubator upon incubator of minority babies. So, every day, the same scenario would repeat itself.

These mothers, you know, eager to get the hot toy of the year, would rush up to the adoption center. And you just watch. They would stop dead in their tracks and their heads go from incubator to incubator. They'd, like, pause briefly at the Asian baby.

Like, oh, never mind. To incubator. And then they would look at us, you know, trying their best to be politically correct. They'd be like, I'm sorry.

Do you have any other shades of babies? Well, the toy manager had, like, prepped us with a response. He taped a memo in the women's locker room that said, if the mothers express a disinterest for the babies due to their ethnicity, kindly inform them that, wow, this is all the selection we have available. There's a wider selection available online.

They can order online. Well, this isn't what these women wanted to hear. They'd go on and on. They'd be like, oh, don't you have something like my little Susan here?

Just something that looks like Susan. And so, this happened so much that we, you know, we invented another game. And the game was this. Like, if the little girl didn't care, but it was clear the mother did, we would put the mother on the spot.

You know, we'd scoop up a baby and be like, oh, little Maria has really taken to you. And Hannah told her, you would make an excellent mommy for Maria. And you just see these mothers in the background like, why are you doing this to me? What are you doing to me?

And then the second game we invented involved Brad's memo. Instead of saying a whiter selection, we'd have to say whiter selection without getting caught a breaking character. But, like, those are the things you do just to survive a job. Because literally every day these things, I didn't expect would happen.

And I remember once, in particular, this woman, I tried to sell her a Hispanic baby. And she put her hand on mine and was like, we don't want a dark child. You know what I mean. No, I don't.

But also, unbeknownst to her, I'm actually half Mexican. I just look white. And my brother, there's five kids. Three are dark.

Two of us are white. So, you know, I don't know what she means. But also, I don't know what she means. Does she honestly think that if someone saw her carrying a Hispanic baby, they would be like, oh, Juan the gardener knocked that kid up?

But this is only half the story. Because while we had sold out of all the white babies, we still had nubbins, who was white with red hair and these green eyes. So if we weren't working with a customer, we still had to be holding rocking and bouncing nubbins. So almost every day, some woman would rush up to the adoption center, see nubbins in our arms and think, in their mind, they're like, that's the last white baby.

So they would say, can I see that baby? All you ever had to do was turn nubbins around. And his head would like flop back and the slippers would flip up. And they would just say, never mind.

And this happens so often that us nurses, we decided to make a bet. And the bet was, who do you think is going to sell first, the minority babies or nubbins? And I was like, oh, the minority babies for sure. Who would buy nubbins?

And then, so to be honest, there are two ways to end this story. There's the politically correct way, or there's the, do you guys want to hear the real? What really happened? All right, it's so depressing.

What really happened is this. We did start to sell out of the minority babies. We sold, first we sold out of all the Asian babies. Then we sold out of all the Hispanic babies.

And then all we had left were incubator upon incubator of black baby dolls and nubbins. So inadvertently, the bet had become, who will go first, the black babies or nubbins? Well, I stood by my initial bet. I was like, we're never going to sell nubbins.

But then Christmas Eve, this woman rushes into the store. She's one of those people dressed head to toe and designer. And she's like, toting along this solemn child. She gets up to the adoption center.

I'm holding nubbins. And she's like, can I see that baby? So I turn nubbins around, you know, slowly for full effect. And his head like flops back, the flippers flip up.

And she just says, we'll take it. I'm like, with nubbins? I don't even know if you can sell nubbins. But I was like, okay.

So I open the white pickup fence. I sit this little girl down. And I begin the adoption interview. I say, do you promise to love and care for this baby?

And this child looks up at me and she says, no. And I'm like, didn't I mean, I've been doing hundreds of adoptions. No one, technically she had failed the adoption interview. So I'm like, move on.

I'm like, will you read to the baby? And she just looks, she's like, no. So I skip to the last question. I'm like, well, what would you like to name the baby?

Stupid. I'm like, I'm not nubbins' best friend. I'm not going to call him stupid. So I'm like, well, let's think of other names.

And the mother impatiently interrupts. She's like, just name the baby Veronica. Which is like, they're not anatomically correct. He's clearly a boy.

So I write Veronica on the birth certificate. And I'm like, now all you have to do is pay the adoption fee. And the mother looks at me and she's like, cute. And takes to the birth certificate.

And they walk away. And I scoop up nubbins. And I put him in a pink blanket instead of a blue one. And as I'm wrapping him up, that's when it hits me.

I'm like, wait, nubbins has just been adopted. Like, I love nubbins. He's like, I can't let him go to this horrible family. And there's this montage.

You know, like, we one time put his head underneath the rocking chair. Or like, we used to make out with him. People would turn the corner and be like, oh. Like, all these memories.

And I was like, I can't let him go to this family. And I was like, I don't want 120 spare dollars. And so then I'm like, oh, I'll call my dad. And I'll be like, dad, there was this baby.

And he was going to go to a bad family. And I think I could be a good family for him. And as I'm saying this, I think honestly, it was also just like, I didn't want to lose the bet. Like, I didn't want that to be the way the world was.

So as I'm going through this, they return. And I do what I have to do. I hand them little baby nubbins. And I say, I'm sure baby Veronica will have a wonderful home.

And I watch him, his head bouncing on the little girl's shoulder outside the store until I can't see them anymore. Thank you. Thank you. And when the morning comes, it feels like my head explodes.

And the world is spinning way too fast. I love a bicycle. I love a bicycle. I love a bicycle.

I love a bicycle. This is Risk. This is Gasoline Brothers behind me now. And we just heard from Elna Baker.

Before that, a bunch of interstitial stuff by Vivian, Tom Paxton, and Divide and Create. And before that, a little anecdote from storyteller and musician Vin Brew. Okay. Let's get back to the stories.

In a little bit, we're going to hear from Jude Trader Wolf. But before that, it's always great to hear from D.C. Benny. Here's Benny now with a story we call Jewish Christmas.

I grew up in Washington, D.C. in the 70s. My father was an artist, a Polish Jew, who came from immigrant parents, who had a grocery store. They lived upstairs, the whole situation, in the ghetto.

So ultimately, it was burned down, you know, like a beautiful right thing. They moved over from Poland and escaped the Holocaust. They got killed in the Holocaust. They made it through.

And he became an artist, much that his parents were in. And my mother was a German dancer that he met in New York. A modern dancer. So they were very creative.

There was a lot of creativity going on. Everything was interpreted. And he would paint. My mother was his muse.

So there were always naked pictures of my mother in the house on the walls, growing up or whatever. So that's always nice when your four-year-old friends, five-year-olds come up and say, is that your mom's in China? And I grew up in this kind of artsy-fartsy house. Like I never watched shows other kids watched.

It was always like Masterpiece Theater, foreign movies. My mom used to take me to see like Fellini and Truffaut and all these. I was a kid, of course, I watched Seven Samurai. I'm four years old.

And all these kids are watching. and, like, swat and shit like that. She dressed me different. She got all the clothes at the thrift shop and had these, like, little velvet fucking knickerbockers and stuff and shiny shoes that looked like a little Dutch boy.

It was horrible. It was horrible. That part of it was horrible for me. So I never felt like the same as other kids.

So, because of the German Jew thing, I was growing up in a world that was predestined for conflict. Now, on my mother's side of the family, her father was in the German army, and, you know, that was a topic of discussion. So she converted to marry my father. But it just wasn't enough, so his side of the family set shiva on him like he was dead to them.

Even though my mother converted, my dad married someone who was a German Catholic, so his family said that he was kind of dead to them. They said he shiva's almost like somebody you do after someone dies. So it's very dramatic. It's so over the top.

And it did not go well with my mom or my dad. You know, that's not nice. But it was all because of this guy that was in the German army. And I remember asking her when I was a kid, was he a Nazi?

She's like, no, you had to join the army and they shoot you. Like, if you don't do your homework, you're going to get shot. That's how it goes down. So they decided that they were going to move to D.C., which is not a good move if you're creative at this time.

This is the early 70s. Very conservative there. We lived in a shitty neighborhood, 14th and P Street, which was a very rough neighborhood. It was like drug dealers and hustlers and this and that.

I remember there was a lady with no legs down the hall, the banana lady that we used to go see. My mom would be like, no, she's the banana lady. And we'd go see her and she'd give me like bananas and she had no legs. It was strange.

And I remember my mom, so I'm trying to break in through the alley. In the back, there was a screened-off porch in the alley. And just like one night, this guy's prying his fingers through a hole he made in the screen. And my mom's taking his broom and just hitting him in the head with a broom repeatedly, just beating this guy in the head.

And still, he's got one eye closed, trying to squeeze through. And she's just smacking him in the head with telling him to go home. I'm just watching this. Three years old.

So we eventually moved out of that neighborhood. We moved into a D.C. suburb. But we were the only artistic family in the neighborhood.

Everybody worked for the government. There was a lot of cherry loafers and pressed khakis, George Bush haircuts and stuff like that. And our house was like the fucking Adams family house. It was like, you go down the block, there's all these houses that look the same and then it was our house.

And my dad would find these old doors and windows and glue them together and make enclosed parts of it. It just looked almost like a spaceship from somewhere else. And people would walk by there. All the houses looked kind of the same.

They were nice little lawns. So they walked by our house like, what the fuck is that? Who the fuck lives here? You know, it's my parents.

So my mom would teach dance classes in the house and it was modern dance. So it was very, it was out there. There was some like 70s space music and people, it was just different. And she would go around and get antiques.

She had this thing about antiques. We had no fucking money. We're on welfare. But somehow she would go get these antiques and she would go trashing.

She'd go in the trash and find these things. So there'd be like these wrought iron fixtures on the lawn. And it was just, it looked crazy. It looked like some Edward Scissorhands would live there or something like that.

Our house. So people were always like, that's the Adam's family house. So she wears this big hat. Everybody called her the bike lady.

She'd ride around on bikes. She'd pick up wrought iron antiques in the bike. It was, you can't explain this existence to people how different it was. You know, everybody else has their big wheels.

They're like, what is wrong with your parents? And my dad would paint. And he'd paint my mom naked. And a couple other things, dead birds, biblical scenes, like really crazy.

Absalom and Kittefel. It was just a really intense environment to grow up in. Everything was creative. And every dinner was a production.

Everything was melded. Religiously, it was very confusing because there was the Jewish part. There was the sort of non-Jewish part. So every year, there was a new configuration of how we were going to do the holidays.

It was mostly Hanukkah. Then there'd be like a little Christmas stuff. And then also, my parents had these friends. There was nobody in the neighborhood that were friends with, but they would import these nutbag friends of theirs.

So there was a guy who slept in Rock Creek Park in a cardboard box that wrote poetry all over the box. The poetry guy. My mom loved that guy. He eventually got banned for peeing in one of the houseplants.

During dinner. My dad was like, that guy can't get up during dinner and piss in the houseplants. It's just, we can't have that. You know, it's great.

He writes on the box and all that. But no more. No more. And then the trash men would come over.

And then he had this last eye. But it was not fitted properly. So it would pop out a lot. Especially if you made them laugh.

For me, I was just discovering I was funny at the time. So I would, every time he'd come over for dinner, I'd make jokes. And he'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then the eye would bug out.

And sometimes it would actually kind of pop out and he'd hold it and show it to me. And I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

It was that fucking eye, man. So these are like my parents' friends. At this time in my life, I really, really wanted. I wanted to be like the other kids in the neighborhood.

I think I was about eight. But I didn't look like them. You know, I couldn't watch this. Like I'd go to school, kids would be like, oh, we watched SWAT or we watched Six Million Dollar Man or whatever.

I'm watching fucking Fellini movies, The Grand Illusion. I mean, that's what I would watch. And I couldn't talk to these kids about anything. You know, my mother would read me these morbid German fairy tales for bedtime.

There was this Taylor, which is this Taylor that when kids are bad, he comes over with this giant pair of scissors and cuts off their thumbs. Or like there's one where these kids are making fun of a black kid and he sets them on fire so they're black. So they learn a lesson. So there's like a moral, it was German morality in these stories.

So I can't even explain how different my upbringing was to everybody around me. I just wanted to be like other kids. I wanted the same toys the other kids had, the same clothes, everybody's got their animals on or their tough skins or whatever. I didn't have any of that shit.

I had my little buckle shoes, my velvet vest or whatever. It was just, ah, it's traumatic talking about. The one toy that everybody wanted was this G.I. Joe with Kung Fu grip.

And you pull the string in the back and it says stuff. He makes commands. It's like, you know, good for action, change it. You fire on the mountain or whatever.

You set a lot of shit. Let's go down the mountain pass. You know, you pull this. Everybody wanted it.

My parents were like, no, you can't have that G.I. Joe. So I wanted one of those. So my grandmother put sad shit on all this.

But once in a while, she'd sneak by, slide me some money. She'd be like, just remember, you're going to be Jewish. You're going to have a ball mitzvah. You're going to date Jewish girls.

But he's $5. And then my mom was like, you can't take bribes. You got to decide for yourself later what you're going to be. Don't take any money from Grandma Sadie.

So I was torn. I wanted a G.I. Joe. I felt like that would be the thing that would make me normal with the other kids.

Like, I don't have a G.I. Joe. You have a G.I. Joe.

It doesn't matter that I can quote Rocco and his brothers or whatever. So Christmas came around. And this is, my parents would fight all the time. Like, the police were always at our house.

They got to know us. There was always something. They fought with the neighbors. It was very volatile.

But they loved each other. They loved each other. So it was like these fights, these intense fights. But they just loved each other afterwards.

It was really crazy. So I think the Ollie Frazier fight of all of them that I can remember was during Christmas Eve. It was going to be Christmas Eve. So my parents were going to have all their friends.

My mom had just gotten some chair from this antique dealer that this guy, I think he had a crush on her. He gave her a little discount. It was like a layaway thing. I don't know what the fuck, how the details were.

We had no money, and yet she had this antique chair. I mean, if you walked in there, it was just like you were in another world. It was like you were in old Europe somewhere. So she had just brought home one of these chairs.

I could tell my dad was pissed because we didn't have any money, but he wasn't really saying anything. Everybody's like, oh, look at the chair. The chair looks great. Look at the chair.

You know, my mom did a dance around the chair. You know, it was a modern dance interpretation. So in the morning, my dad would send me to go get cigarettes. So I get on my bike.

I'm fucking eight years old. I'd have a note. I'd go to a Korean place, and I'd get a carton of Marlboro Reds, right? And then I could go to a liquor store, and this is the 70s, and I had another note that I would get helmet in Mountain Red Burgundy, which is this cheap-ass wine.

I don't even know if they still make it. That was some rock good stuff. So I put it in my bike. No helmet.

I didn't have any helmet back then. And I'd bring all that shit back. So they got their supplies. My dad's cooking.

My dad was a great cook. And my mom's playing music and dancing around the house, and everything's kind of cool. And then people start trickling in. You know, this Indian-English guy that was in the Royal Air Force.

They always talk about bombing German. So he would come over. You know, he's been boozing already. The Poet in the Box came.

This was, I think, later that he actually got banned for being in the plant. A couple other people, and there was also a farmer. This farmer would come around the neighborhood, and he would bring food from his farm. And then my favorite guy, Michael, the opera singer, with the eye, he shows up.

So everybody's hanging out. And the party's starting. They start drinking. They're drinking at Almaden Mountain Red Burgundy.

They're smoking. The opera singer guy broke out a little weed. My mom's like, she smoked it. She's like, I can't go.

I want to go back to the Royal Air Force. I don't like him. So everybody's hanging out. And what we would do is we would combine.

We had this giant menorah that my mother found somewhere in an antique shop. They would tie bits of Christmas tree branch to it. We called it the Tremora. So the Tremora's in the corner, so we had this kind of Chris Monica kind of thing going on.

I remember every year was something different, but this year was, like, really official, and we're going to do that. So my parents have everybody over. Think about this, G.I. Joe.

It's not under the Tremora. There's, like, a wooden thing, and there's a book of Grimm's fairy tales, which I've really had enough of to fucking Juniper Tree, all these morbid stories. And they're boozing. Everybody's getting hammered on this Almaden, and the doorbell rings.

It's the antique dealer that my mom has gotten this chair from that she was supposed to pay for. It's going to be money, so this guy's come to repossess the chair. The RAF pilot is like, you can't take anybody out of the room. Takes a swing at him.

They get into a scuffle, and then finally the farmer goes out to the van and got a 2x4 that had a nail in it, and he's like, this is what I kill hogs with. Man, you're going to leave that chair right here. You're going to go back to Armenia or wherever you can. The chair did stay.

I think the chair did stay. I think I repossessed later, but the guy came with reinforcements. So it was just a very tense evening. After that, my dad's like, okay, everybody's got to go.

My parents get in this huge argument, right? And every time they got in an argument, the World War II shit came up. So it's Christmas Eve, and I'm hearing it. My dad's like, you're going to your body.

Goddamn, we're on welfare. And then she's like, you failed artist. You're in your pain. So all this is going on.

They get into it. There's a huge fight. My mom's like, your mother said shiv on me. I'm not a shit, so I'm not good enough for you.

He's like, what are you talking? You know, she's like, I wish they burnt your mother in an oven. I wish they stuck you in an oven, right? So my dad is outside, when she said that, smoking a cigarette, and she locked him out of the house.

And I knew that oven line. I was like, that's like, that's going to happen. So we punched through the glass, reached in and started unlocking the door, and I see his hand. I'm all fucking cut up and everything.

And I'm like, mom, go, go, go. He's going to fucking kill you, right? They're yelling. He's wrapping a dish towel around his hand.

There's fucking blood everywhere. He's like, where is she? Where is she? I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know. And then right then, if it wasn't bad enough, this is a thing that my mother used to do when they would argue she would crank on this German marching music. And so, you hear it in the house, like, you know, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, why is he going to the bells for him? Him hearing that fucking, I mean, his face, you know, he's covering his ears with a bloody hand.

He's like, he's punching the refrigerator. He's losing his mind. He's banging on the door. He goes downstairs, he like, smashes the fucking chair, right?

Just destroys the chair. The music's playing. He stayed in the basement, just destroying stuff. She locked herself upstairs, playing this crazy fucking music.

that was our Christmas Eve, man. It was one of many traumatic things. Like I said, they loved each other. Next morning I get up, the Christmas Donnica tree is trashed, but it's like nothing ever happened.

Like, he's cooking some breakfast, she comes downstairs, she's like, she looks at him, she's like, you want to fight? You want to fight? She's like, come on, you know, fat man, you want to fight? She's kind of teasing him and shit.

She's like, you still mad at me or whatever, and start poking him and everything. He's like, ah, he started laughing, and he gives her a hug or whatever, and they both apologized to me. And the cycle sort of happened all over again, but it was right then at breakfast, they're kind of making up, everything feels like it's going to be normal again for the next few days, and the phone rings, and it's the opera singer guy, and he has lost his glass eye. And he's like, he's frantically, he can't find it, he doesn't know how he got home without it, and can we look for the glass eye?

So we're all looking for it, we're looking under the chair bits, we're looking all over for his fucking eye, and I'm trying to remember, I made him laugh at the dinner table, what did it pop out there, whatever, but then I remember that he used to go out, we had compost in the back, and he would go out, smoke a joint back there every once in a while, because my parents didn't do that, I went out and there, like right next to an orange rind, was that glass eye, so I bring it in, boom, they call him, I get a reward of five dollars, I get the fucking G.I. Joe, he gets the eye, so, and it was not like a bribe, my mom was like, you can take that five dollars, she gave him his eyeball back, so the story does have a happy ending, it all ends happy, until the next fight, you know, which was like, about four or five days later. The first holiday season that I'm living on the East Coast, I feel like it's something I've been waiting for my entire life, I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, obsessed with New York City, from movies and TV shows and books, New York City seems to me, a place of constant activity and amazing possibility, a place anything could happen, especially New York City at the holidays. Our Christmas season kicked off with watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which ends at Macy's, the mecca of all department stores, the kind of place I have never been, so I cannot wait to experience that for real, and I was watching Miracle on 34th Street over and over again, over the entire holiday season when I was a kid, which takes place at Macy's, and there are other movies that just make the New York City shops look so stunning, there's usually music playing from somewhere, people with packages, then there's The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza, I cannot wait to experience that holiday magic for myself.