Happy birthday, elf
IT’S EARLY DECEMBER and already the topic of re-gifting has come up. For instance, I wonder if I can take Don and Kate the nice bottle of Grey Goose vodka they gave me on my birthday. I no longer drink much at home -- I prefer to do my drinking at work. That way, when I blather incoherently, no one much notices.
“You can’t re-gift to the person who gave it to you originally,” my wife explains.
Now she tells me. I never knew the rules for re-gifting were so specific. Mostly, I don’t even look at the stuff. I just take it and hand it to the person next to me. Here, Merry Christmas!
“What about him?” I ask, nodding toward the toddler.
“Huh?”
“Think we could re-gift him?”
“That,” says my wife, “would just be rude.”
I remember when the little guy was born, and I said to myself, “Good, another strong young back to help me till the land.” Now, as he’s about to turn 4, I realize that it hasn’t turned out that way. Not at all.
In fact, he hasn’t touched a plow or helped me weed the tomatoes. He’s more interested in electronics -- as if there’s any future in that field.
The little guy is good with remotes and can play Snood on the computer. He can work a cellphone. He’s also one of those 21st century dudes who cringes when he gashes his milky little knee. Good thing he lives in L.A.
“Come on, be a man,” I’m constantly urging him.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you, Butch.”
“Why you call me Butch?”
Seems to fit him, that’s all. He’s like a professional sidekick, an Ed McMahon or a Spiro Agnew, or one of those scrawny and suspicious guys who marry rock stars. He’s accomplished nothing on his own, he simply mooches off the hard work of others. We’re talking four years, nada. Nada thing.
“Hey Butch, want a scrambled egg?” I ask him.
“Sure,” he says.
Together we make the egg. We like to get up early like this, just the two of us, before anybody can turn on a TV or start yammering on the phone about nothing whatsoever. At that time of day, it’s just him, me and the hum of the refrigerator. It’s sort of magic.
“I help,” he says, as I pull out a frying pan.
Fortunately, a scrambled egg is not as complicated as it sounds. First, we have to find a nice chicken. A passive chicken. We have to get to know the chicken on a personal level, comfort her through contractions, feed her ice chips, rub her slender shoulders.
“What comes first: the chicken or the scrambled egg?” I quiz the little guy as he stirs the egg.
“Huh?”
Just like his mother. I spend half my life making jokes and the other half explaining them.
By the way, have you seen his mother lately? She’s got this total Santa complex going -- the big boots, the faux fur, the profligate spending.
She dashes all over town running up debt that our grandchildren will be paying off -- Greenspan called it generational debt, I think -- in the hopes that Christmas will be an epic event that will make everybody grateful and happy and full of love, if only till brunch on the 25th.
Good luck, Santa baby. You can’t buy happiness. Not with your credit limits.
Still, there are already gift baskets on the kitchen counter, and I noticed that someone has broken into the peppermint mints from See’s, the dark chocolates with the gooey peppermint middles. Yes, of course it was me.
At least we know those won’t be re-gifted. We won’t be seeing that thoughtful present handed off to some third party. I’ve personally seen to that.
“What do you want to do for his birthday?” his mother asks.
“We should,” I say without hesitating, “mark the occasion.”
“That’s what I was thinking too.”
Already, the little guy has received one birthday card, which sits up on the mantel. He points to it with pride to anyone entering the house. “Look, my birthday card!” as if he’ll get only one.
I’m not worried. I think he’ll get more than one. He may get several.
The important thing to note is that here, in this season of gifts, he is the easiest person to buy for. You could wrap a plastic spoon in tinfoil and he’d open it and hug you hard around the neck. I once gave him the Sunday comics. He loved them, coffee stains and all.
You’re 4 years old, little guy, and even at that advanced age, you still believe it’s the thought that counts. God bless ya.
Happy birthday, Butch. Enjoy every candle.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com, or at myspace.com/chriserskine.
