Christmas | Elbrecht's Corpuscle

‘Twas a flight before Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Elbrecht

‘Twas a bumpy flight before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a passenger was stirring, not even a spouse.
The drinks were all spiked by the flight attendant with care,
In hopes that in Boston, we all soon would be there

The children were all screaming, wanting to be home in their beds,
While visions of Pokemon-Go danced in their heads.
And the grandma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my hoodie,
Had just settled in for our last flight, a gut-wrenching goodie.

When out on the wing, there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my seat to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I looked with alarm,
To see what it was, causing us such harm.

The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to Boston below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a ruby red sleigh, and eight tired reindeer.

With an old lost driver, so chubby and adorned like a hick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
Oh Comet! Oh Cupid! Oh Donner and Blitzen!
We landed on the wing, not atop a porch or wall!?
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the wing,
What sounded like the Angels, beginning to sing.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
In through the cock-pit door St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
Like an 18th century Appalachian trader, all covered in soot.
A bundle of sticks he had flung on his back,
Unexpected to be stranded, even he thought the flight was whack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
The plane jumped around in the air, soft like a bow,
And the passengers cried and whaled like a newly shot crow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
My eyes met his and noticed his little round belly,
The plane shook and lurched, bouncing my brain, like a bowlful of jelly!

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And re-filled all the boozy drinks, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside an old woman’s nose,
He calmed her fears, and the boozy drink rose.

He then sprang back to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew off the wing like the down of a thistle.
The plane, it righted, with no more of a peep,
The fear amongst the passengers was gone , though it’d been quite deep.

Just then I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Welcome Back to Boston, and to all a good-night!”

Sportsworld

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Elbrecht

—–

My father was sitting beside me the first time I had a naked woman in my lap. I was 16.

We were supposed to be going to Sportsworld, one of my favorite places to go during what I thought was my relatively normal childhood. My father informed my step-mother we were going to use the batting cages, ride the go-carts, and play some skeeball on a Saturday night; turns out one of my father’s favorite places to go during what I thought was my relatively normal childhood was Jezebel’s.

Both Sportsworld and Jezebel’s were on the outskirts of the ever-expanding city limits, but they were in completely opposite directions from my father’s home. After driving a mile in the “wrong” direction, it dawned on me Sportsworld was no longer our final destination. I simply sat in the passenger’s seat as Sportsworld got further and further away.

When we arrived, my father calmly told the bouncer, “This is my son. He’s 21.” The bouncer only glanced at me. By the age of 16, I had already been mistaken for a grown man several times, but typically it was while wearing slacks, a button-down shirt, and tie; not while wearing mybaseball cap, glasses, and cargo shorts.

—–

The bouncer waved me through; identification was unnecessary. Ending up at Jezebel’s that evening, rather than Sportsworld, was simply another example in a long list of why I had learned to distrust my father.

As a concept, distrust had been carefully weaved into our relationship several years prior. At the age of 7, my father entered my bedroom, put his hand on my shoulder and told me he was leaving our family. He was blunt and unapologetic, laying the blame at someone else’s feet and talking to me as if I could possibly understand his rationale; I did not.

—-

—–

The TV was on in the background and my eyes darted from the screen to his face as he relayed how he would not be there in the morning. As he lifted his hand from my shoulder and exited the room, his words were searing into my brain.

Somehow, I slept soundly that evening, but when I awoke the next morning, he was there. It was as if the previous night had been a dream. I wondered if I had misunderstood what he said; the weight of his hand on my shoulder had been so heavy. And so real. My 7-year-old brain wondered what changed. Only years later would I identify the feeling I had when I saw him the next morning as trust being smashed like a mandolin with a sledgehammer.

—–

Distrust was brewing. Eventually, he did leave. Seven years later. And the morning when I awoke and he wasn’t there, I knew why. He hadn’t come into my room the night before and repeated his reasoning to me. And I didn’t need him to. I still remembered his words, the weight of his hand on my shoulder, from when I was a child. If he had come to me again, I would have waved him through, as calmly and coolly as the bouncer at Jezebel’s.

—–

As I was being directed to a table near the main stage by my father, nearly six months had elapsed since I had moved away from my hometown of Wichita. My mother had decided to leave the place I had always known as home, forcing a decision to be made individually by each of her children as to where we would live. At 15, my options were limited.

I could stay and live with my father and my new step-mother or pack-up my life, leave my friends, and embark down a path of no return. The concept of trust, having germinated from an unrecognized emotion, which I had been unable to identify at the age of 7, was fully functional by this time.

Subsequently, when my father got married to a woman I had only met twice, I was completely aware that I did not trust him. He had not even bothered to invite us to the wedding, a civil ceremony in another state.

He simply relayed it as a fact one morning while dropping my brother and I off at school. This certainly factored in my decision as to whether I should stay in Wichita or embark to parts unknown; it made the decision to leave that much easier.

—–

Thus, my father must have viewed my six-week stay in Wichita during the summer of 1996 as a bit of a homecoming, but also as a chance to recover something he had lost; Me.

Driving the go-carts and playing video games seemed to me like a reasonable way to spend a Saturday night. But my father thought watching naked women grind on his son was a better idea. And perhaps a way to win me back. In the blink of an eye, I went straight from green-as-can-be to strip club veteran. By the time we left, I had put a dollar bill in places only possible if a woman weren’t wearing any clothes.

I suppose it was his own version of “The Birds and the Bees” speech.

—–

I roughly translated it as: “Have money. Women will get naked. And sit in your lap.”

Not too much in there about birds or bees. When I was living in nYc a couple years ago, a woman I was dating asked about my parents and my father in particular. Over the course of my sharing, the story of my night at Jezebel’s with dear ‘ol dad cropped up. It probably wasn’t the best example of his parenting, but it was a close approximation.

I believe her response was, “Holy shit.”

Alas, it wouldn’t be the last time he would suggest we visit Jezebel’s together. But by the next time he offered I was a grown adult, and didn’t feel like it fit with the holiday spirit after spending the morning feeding the less fortunate. When he suggested we go back to “Sportsworld”, I politely declined, despite his pleas.

As we pulled into the driveway on that humid summer night in 1996, fresh off a once-in-a-lifetime Dad and Son outing to the strip club, my father looked at me with his sheepish grin: “Remember, if she asks, we were at Sportsworld.” Naked women snatching up dollar bills is not exactly what I expected from my night. When we left his house I was prepared to a re-enact Death Race 2000 on the go-cart track, not witness fully-nude Flash Dance on the Main Stage.

—–

Then again, I had already learned all I needed to know about trust from this man.

I Joined the Army

Posted on December 25, 2013 by Elbrecht

{I was reminded of this day during a text message exchange with an old friend last night… originally posted 12.27.08}

I never thought I would join the army, but on Christmas Day, I decided to enlist. It has always been a passion of mine to serve others through hard work and volunteerism, just like millions of American men before me.

Thankfully though, the army with which I decided to enlist is not currently deployed to Iraq. Instead, I decided to suit up and become a part of The Salvation Army… if only for a day.

Most people don’t realize that The Salvation Army is actually a religious organization with strict doctrine. So strict that you can not marry outside of the Army if you are an officer, even if your spouse dies. Imagine if the US Army didn’t allow you to marry outside of the Army… forget “Don’t ask, don’t tell”… we’re talking full-fledged legalization of gay marriage. But I digress…

My brother, father, and I decided to partake in some volunteerism on Christmas morning/day rather than sitting around my father’s dining room table, eating cereal in our boxer shorts and watching cartoons. We were hoping that our experience at The Salvation Army in Wichita would far exceed that sort of fun. So rather than that sort of excitement, we woke up early on Christmas morning and headed over to The Army’s west Wichita headquarters, suited up in Salvation Army aprons, threw on some disposable latex gloves, and joined the other early morning enlistees.

In any good army, there is a slightly psychotic drill sergeant to whip the enlistees into shape and turn them into model soldiers. Our drill sergeant was “Debbie”, a 40-something woman dressed in jeans that were too tight, a blue Hawaiian shirt, and sporting a set of black sunglasses that were perched on her dirty blond hair. She was whipping soldiers into shape when we arrived at 9:30AM; she was also definitely “on” a cocktail of some psychotropic medication and caffeine, despite the early hour.

When we first arrived, tables still needed to be set, bread put into baskets, cranberry sauce removed from the hermetically sealed containers and sloshed into a giant serving bowl, and individual serving size butters put into bowls on the tables. There were around 30 other volunteers when we arrived. It was seemingly a mix of social outcasts, families torturing their teenage children with volunteer service, old couples whose extended family did not want to spend Christmas with them, and us. We quickly went to work completing the tasks assigned by Debbie as she stormed around the spacious dining room wide-eyed and highly caffeinated. She would occasionally flip her sunglasses down from her hair to her face while responding to a question with “You don’t wanna ask me that… you really don’t!” In the kitchen, there were four guys preparing the feast and I later learned that they had been there since 4AM. Huge tubs of mashed potatoes, green beans, and stuffing were percolating on the executive size stoves. Turkey slices were warming in aluminum cookware while the sweet potatoes were being prepared on a side table. It was only 10AM, but my stomach was craving a monstrous heaping of Christmas dinner.

By 10:15, the dining room preparation had been completed, my father was exhausted from scooping out bowls of cranberry sauce, and Debbie had finished two 20 ounce bottles of Diet Coke. More volunteers had arrived and were making small talk while awaiting the people who would be coming to our locale for a great Christmas dinner. I chatted up one of the kitchen volunteers while he was taking a break and he relayed to me some of the more important and tedious jobs that would need to be completed. While standing in the window between the dining room and kitchen, he told me that he would need a few guys to be at the window at all times to be ready to dispense the clean dishes as they came out of the wash. I decided this would be the perfect job for my dad, brother, and I.

I called them over and we marked our territory by simply ordering around the other volunteers who approached the window with naive curiosity. As described by my new kitchen friend, our job would entail unloading the clean dishes and silverware from the dish rack in lightning quick fashion, transporting them to their appropriate place in the dining room, and walking the dish rack ten feet over to the poor schlubs who were scraping the dirty plates of any remaining food particles. In my mind, it was a job suitable to one person, two at the most, but I figured we had come as a family entity and should just stick together (otherwise, my dad was likely to disappear and leave my brother and I volunteering to our hearts content). I quickly decided to refer to our positions at the kitchen window as a “union job”: one man to do the work, a second man to supervise the first man’s work, and a third man to go on break.

The dinner was scheduled to begin at 11AM, and as the hour neared, Debbie called everyone’s attention to the front of the dining room through the use of a microphone. She introduced a short, balding man with grey-fogged glasses and white hair crazily streaming out of places where it remained on his head. He introduced himself as a member of The Salvation Army and the man in charge of the day’s event. He quickly launched into a quick description of the impending event that went something like this:

“We really appreciate you all coming today. Without you volunteers we wouldn’t be able to serve these people. Remember, these are people too. They are just like you and me, they are people too. They might look a little different, but they are people. Please do not touch them. Many of them do not like that. They might be confused when you touch them. But you can talk to them. And bring them food. Be nice to them, we should show them love, because some of these people have nothing. If we do that, they will appreciate it.”

I quickly glanced over to my brother and asked, “Who the hell are we serving? Convicts?” It wasn’t until that time that I had really considered who would be attending this event, but I had originally assumed that it would be individuals from group homes, potentially homeless individuals, and families who could not afford a nice meal on this blessed day. From the description provided by Salvation Sal, I was half expecting them to wheel in cages that contained half man, half werewolf hybrids who would be frothing at the mouth. Either that or convicts wearing ankle bracelets.

When Salvation Sal completed his stirring speech, Debbie piped in and explained what the ever-increasing multitude of volunteers should be doing from 11AM to 1PM while dinner was being served. Luckily, I had already secured our union job at the kitchen window and I tuned out her crazy-eyed instructions. When she finished instructing the other volunteers, she strolled by our position and stopped to look at the three of us. She asked, “What are you gentlemen doing today? You just gonna stand there and look pretty?” My dad quickly piped in, “Yes ma’am, we found ourselves a union gig, and we’re just gonna stand here.” Apparently, my father had decided to get into the Christmas spirit and feed into Debbie’s now completely evident psychosis. She gave us a crazy smile and flipped her sunglasses down to cover her eyes as she walked away. She returned moments later with a large glass bowl full of ice and four cans of Diet Coke. She looked at the three of us through her sunglasses and said, “Guard these with your life.”

When the guests arrived, it was clear that Salvation Sal must have been scarred by some past Christmas Day fiasco. The individuals were just as I had expected, not the newly released were-beasts that his description had made me envision. Other volunteers took the guests’ orders, brought them food, talked to them and made them feel welcome, and cleaned their place mats when they were finished. This cycle of life continued for the next two hours as even more volunteers arrived, seemingly only to make an appearance after having played a rousing round of Wii tennis on their newly acquired gaming system. These stragglers mostly stayed off to the side and watched the other volunteers do their thing. Our union job provided some action every 5 minutes or so as clean dishes would be brought to the window and we would unload it contents in under 5 seconds and then hand the dish rack to a guy who was dressed like he might be the lead singer of Wichita’s newest 30-something boy band.

During the lull between freshly cleaned cutlery and dishware, the three of us kept ourselves entertained with jokes about union jobs. We were eventually joined by a young boy, approximately 10 years old, whom I nicknamed Huck Finn and who must have determined we were the coolest group in the entire room. He tried to be a fast learner, but repeatedly burned himself with the piping hot silverware because he grabbed them right out of the rack, instead of emptying them into the silverware bin. Of course, in line with our sophomoric humor of the day, we kindly made fun of him for it.

As 1:30 neared, we each took turns grabbing a plate of food and satisfying the hunger pangs that had been emanating from our bellies for the last several hours. Thankfully, it tasted even better than I had imagined. Over the course of the four hours we volunteered that day, my father, brother, and I shared many laughs, performed a serviceable duty to one of our nation’s finest armies, and made fun of a pre-teen who thought we were cool. In the end, it was as fulfilling as I had imagined, but the added bonus of interacting with Salvation Sal, Debbie, and Huck Finn made it a Christmas adventure that I will not soon forget. I might even consider enlisting again next year.

I Joined the Army

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Elbrecht

Thankfully though, the army with which I decided to enlist is not currently deployed to Iraq. Instead, I decided to suit up and become a part of The Salvation Army… if only for a day.

There were around 30 other volunteers when we arrived. It was seemingly a mix of social outcasts, families torturing their teenage children with volunteer service, old couples whose extended family did not want to spend Christmas with them, and us. We quickly went to work completing the tasks assigned by Debbie as she stormed around the spacious dining room wide-eyed and highly caffeinated.

She would occasionally flip her sunglasses down from her hair to her face while responding to a question with “You don’t wanna ask me that… you really don’t!”

In the kitchen, there were four guys preparing the feast; I later learned that they had been there since 4AM. Huge tubs of mashed potatoes, green beans, and stuffing were percolating on the executive-size stoves. Turkey slices were warming in aluminum cookware while the sweet potatoes were being prepared on a side table. It was only 10AM, but my stomach was craving a monstrous heaping of Christmas dinner.

I chatted up one of the kitchen volunteers while he was taking a break and he relayed to me some of the more important and tedious jobs that would need to be completed. While standing in the window between the dining room and kitchen, he told me that he would need a few guys to be at the window at all times to be ready to dispense the clean dishes as they came out of the wash. I decided this would be the perfect job for my dad, brother, and I.

In my mind, it was a job suitable to one person, two at the most, but I figured we had come as a family entity and should just stick together (otherwise, my dad was likely to disappear and leave my brother and I volunteering to our hearts content). I quickly decided to refer to our positions at the kitchen window as a “union job”: one man to do the work, a second man to supervise the first man’s work, and a third man to go on break.

He introduced himself as a member of The Salvation Army and the man in charge of the day’s event. He quickly launched into a quick description of the impending event that went something like this:

When Salvation Sal completed his stirring speech, Debbie piped in and explained what the ever increasing multitude of volunteers should be doing from 11AM to 1PM while dinner was being served. Luckily, I had already secured our union job at the kitchen window and I tuned out her crazy-eyed instructions.

When she finished instructing the other volunteers, she strolled by our position and stopped to look at the three of us. She asked, “What are you gentlemen doing today? You just gonna stand there and look pretty?” My dad quickly piped in, “Yes ma’am, we found ourselves a union gig, and we’re just gonna stand here.”

Apparently, my father had decided to get into the Christmas spirit and feed into Debbie’s now completely evident psychosis. She gave us a crazy smile and flipped her sunglasses down to cover her eyes as she walked away. She returned moments later with a large glass bowl full of ice and four cans of Diet Coke. She looked at the three of us through her sunglasses and said, “Guard these with your life.”

Other volunteers took the guests’ orders, brought them food, talked to them and made them feel welcome, and cleaned their placemats when they were finished. This cycle of life continued for the next two hours as even more volunteers arrived, seemingly only to make an appearance after having played a rousing round of Wii tennis on their newly acquired gaming system.

These stragglers mostly stayed off to the side and watched the other volunteers do their thing. Our union job provided some action every 5 minutes or so as clean dishes would be brought to the window and we would unload it contents in under 5 seconds and then hand the dish-rack to a guy who was dressed like he might be the lead singer of Wichita’s newest 30-something boy band.

In the end, it was as fulfilling as I had imagined, but the added bonus of interacting with Salvation Sal, Debbie, and Huck Finn made it a Christmas adventure that I will not soon forget. I might even consider enlisting again next year.