It's Christmas Eve, and all through the house there is the sound of cursing because our toilet has stopped up. I suspect there's a leak in the drain line below the apartment, or the sump, or something. For days, we've been hearing a weird glooping sound. Now it won't flush at all.
Since we're in the process of trading our 1 BR apartment for a much nicer 3BA 2BA house in less than a month, we're annoyed but not distraught - if they need to dig up the pipes eventually, they can hopefully wait until after our closing date of January 15th when we're out of here.
In the meantime, it's a matter of walking a block down to the leasing office in the cold rain (we asked for a white Christmas, not a wet Christmas) to go pee. I doubt even the emergency repairman is going to come out tonight.
I got to thinking about some other crummy Christmases I had. Most notably, the Christmas when I turned seven.
It shouldn't have been a lame Christmas. When you're seven, you still halfway believe in Santa and you still think that whatever toys that are advertised in commercials are the omg!!best thing you could ever ask for. I had asked Santa for a Barbie Dream House, and thanks to the wonders of the Post Exchange, my mother managed to snag one for around $50. It wasn't pink and white, and I don't think it was even an official Mattel product, but by God it was an 11" doll dream house and a little girl's dream.
My mother realized something was wrong when I was merely staring at the newfound wonder, without even saying thank you, singing praises to Santa or baby Jesus, let alone screaming for joy. I remember being very happy, but I don't remember much afterward, because that's when the screaming began for real. My mother had noticed blood coming out of my ear.
I had frequent ear infections as a child. Looking back, I'm incredibly grateful that I was an army brat, because the number of times I landed in the emergency room with an ear-splitting (literally) headache is too many for me to recount. But I remember that Christmas.
Instead of playing joyfully with my new toys, I was carted off to the ER at Eisenhower Army Medical Center, crying, in my PJs. After a fairly long wait (it felt like an eternity, and of course they are minimally staffed on major holidays) I was diagnosed with a ruptured eardrum. Santa's other gift to me was painkillers, antibiotics, and half a dozen candy canes from the hospital staff.
Today's toilet stop-up won't ruin Christmas for us, although it may make things awkward in the morning before we head off to visit the family. But somewhere out there, some kid is landing in the ER, having the lamest Christmas ever, too sick or injured to even play with his toys.
All I can hope is that I, or one of my own, never has to go through that ever again.