kILLING TIME.S

           Well tomorrow is Christmas Eve. My wife and daughter are in the bed room wrapping gifts so I can't go to bed and it's 11pm so I guess I'll just sit here and keep you awake with me.I remember way back when I was about 12 years old and was old enough so we'd open our presents on Christmas Eve after mid night mass. My Aunt Millie and Uncle Art were usually there. Anyways my dad gives my mom this lamp.  Not just any lamp. This lamp would light up the top bulb and if you turned the switch again a glass globe in the middle of the lamp would light up. Hold on, if you turned the switch a third time both would light up. This was amazing. My brother and I never saw anything like this.

          Well it was getting late and my father decided to go to bed, big mistake on his part. Here we were sitting around, my brother and I with my mom and one of us, probably me, says I WONDER HOW THIS THING WORKS. Now I don't know why my mom let us do it, maybe she was busy cleaning up, but before you know it we had the lamp all apart on the floor with no idea how to put it back together.You could imagine what my father said the next morning. I don't know if I was Jesus Christ or God damn it but it took my father all day to put it back together.

           Lets see how they're doing, Still can't see my bed. Oh well, you didn't want to sleep tonight did you? Where was I? Oh ya, some Christmas' stand out more than others. One of the most rememberable,is that a word?,was when my kids were small. It was Christmas Eve and we had just finished super when the phone rings. My wife answers it and tells me that was Mrs Claus and that Santa would be paying us a visit. Ya, right. Well a little while later there's a knock on the door and you guested it, it was Santa and Mrs Claus. They had a present for each of my kids, just what they wanted too. I gave Santa a hug and thanked him but to this day we have no idea who he was. May be it was really Santa.

            How we doing in there? OK, they're almost done. How ya doing? I'm getting tired too. An other Christmas stands out too. It was 1967 and I was in Vietnam. I was assigned to a landing craft, YFU 68. Anyways there was only about ten guys on the boat and we had our own cook, Frank Crookes was his name. Well Frank cooked for three days,Imean he busted his butt so we'd have a good dinner. Any way we happened to be at Danang Christmas day and the other guys went to the club for a few drinks. Another guy and I had the duty. Frank tells them be back for dinner at six if your not here the whole meals going over the side. Well six comes and goes and frank tells us eat all you want cause the rest is going in the water and that's where it went. When they all came back drunk and hungry asking where's super he just pointed at the water and they missed the best meal I had in a long time.

           I guess they're about done so I'll let you go to bed now. Thanks for keeping me company. Hope you have a merry Christmas. Good night.