Christmas is here and so are the creeps
Self Editors Note: The holidays bring “friends” and “loved ones” you haven’t heard from since the same time last year. Don’t be afraid to tell them to go back to the caves.
CHANCES are, like me, you have people “in your life” who haven’t returned repeated calls or e-mails since the last holiday season. (The nightly calls from your relatives in Africa asking for dollars do not count. They never even say hello, or thank you for the millions of shillings — and I’m not talking Zimbabwean — you sent them last week. Do Asians, Latinos and other poverty-ridden people of color have this problem?).
Ma is sick. Yes, again. Our family witchdoctor says the ulcers come from too much stress. Ma says you getting married and giving her grandchildren will definitely solve the problem, but for now dollars seem to work just fine. We shopped on credit for Christmas, so please send the money. I’m already at Western Union and MoneyGram isn’t far.
Many of the creeps aren’t even on Facebook, so when you’re stressing about why they don’t return calls you can’t poke them — without a stick and still brag to the world that you have achieved the difficult task of poking a creep across the continent. (I love the Facebook tool, though. How else could I poke all the 47 the girls I have a crush on, plus the 32 virgins I fantasize about, in just over a minute?)
You even can’t spy on your loved ones through their stupid, creatively-impaired status updates. (Johnny Dumbass just woke up). So you just sit there, all year long, lonely, mad and sad, waiting for some loved one to return a call.
Christmas comes again, and, as my American friends love to say, lo and behold, the hundreds of family and friends you had sworn to cut off your life start flooding your voice mail.
The voice mail opens with a few second of a Christmas song — most likely “Rudolph the Redneck Reindeer.”
MUSIC UNDER
Meeeerry Christmasss, Our long-lost Man in America! I know you don’t believe, Our (expletive) Heathen in America, but John the Baptist, the guy whose crucifixion we’re celebrating today, really did carry your sins on a cross across the scotching Middle East desert for 40 days and 40 nights. Barefoot! Had not a drop of water to drink, praise the Lord.
Yes, he did walk ON water along the way but he wasn’t thirsty yet. And they didn’t even have oil companies in the desert back then — 10 million years ago — so it’s not like he could have stopped at a Halliburton oil rig and ask for a barrel to carry the [Black]water in. Dick Cheney was there, though. It’s not a joke. He is in the bible. He is that old.
Merry Christmas, anyway, you pagan. God bless you and God bless America so you can keep sending dollars home to alleviate the plight of that godforsaken continent. And hey I … BEEEEEEEEEP. TO LISTEN TO YOUR MESSAGE, PRESS 2. PARA ESPANOL OPRIMA EL NUMERO DOS.
Phew! My cell phone provider sucks (I have Sprint) but limiting voice mail length is the best thing they have ever done. Can you imagine having to listen to 10 minutes of that crap?
And that’s just the voice mails. I could write and write and write about the SMS text messages. In most of them you can tell that the creep sent to multiple mobile phones.
Merry Christmas to you and yours from your sister in Christ.
I know that’s a mass Christmas wish-mail because, 1). I don’t have mine. (Sorry Ma, I haven’t found one. But that doesn’t mean you go out there and tell Bosire’s daughter to move into saiga, my boyhood hut, and be my wife in absentia). And 2). I haven’t been “in Christ” since I was in primary school, and I doubt any sister from that era has my phone number.
Once in a while a text message from someone who knows me a little bit about me comes in.
Hi Our Estranged Man in America!!!! LOL!!!! That was funny!! Get it? You estranged like a stranger! You should use that on stage but I will require loyalties!!! LMAO!!! Anyways, Merry Xmas, my brother. Let’s touch base same time next year.
(That’s way more that 160 characters).
Every year around Jan. 10, my oppressive phone service “carrier” of all that is evil sends me the bill, and, Holy Mother of Christmas! Because I’m usually off work during those holy days, I had forgotten that Christmas fell on a weekday and mother of all billing devils doesn’t count them as “nights and weekends.” I had returned every call from the same loved ones who hadn’t done the same the last five times I called. I spent hours and hours on the phone “catching up,” whatever the (expletive) that means.
Add to the bill over-limit texts at $.20 each.
This year, I’m not answering — let alone returning — calls to anyone who doesn’t understand that good friendship is a two-way relationship. If, like me, you are the one always calling “friends,” I suggest you do the same. Learn to say NO. If you don’t, you are getting a raw deal, and — in this deprecession — it can be costly.
Merry whatever makes you feel complete.
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