My friend Leon’s family is all either dead or 500 miles away, so on Christmas or the day after every year, I invite him to breakfast or lunch. We don’t exchange presents or mistletoe kisses, and barely even mention Xmas, but he’s not the kind of guy who’d want to spend his holiday alone. Am I a mensch or what?
Last year, my brother Clay (who’s also a friend of Leon) heard that we were having lunch on the day after Xmas, so he invited himself and his wife Karen, and the four of us met at a restaurant and had lunch together. Clay & Karen love Trump & Jesus, so it wasn’t quite as relaxed as when it was just Leon & me, but it was still nice.
This year, Clay invited everyone — the entire extended Holland family. I will note without comment that he didn’t run the idea past me first; he simply announced the big event would be at noon, on the day after Christmas, at the same restaurant where the four of us had eaten last year. Noon at a restaurant, of course, will be crazy crowded, so I said 11AM please, and we negotiated down to 11:30.
As always happens, most of the Hollands declined, but enough attended to give me a headache. Leon was there, of course, and Clay and Karen, their son Tom and his wife Magenta, Tom & Magenta’s young daughters Sydney and Ellen, my brother Dick and his wife Young-suk, Young-suk’s adult son Lenny, Lenny’s wife Gem, their adult son Hakeem (his Muslim name, post-conversion), my dead brother Ralph’s fiancée Anna, Anna’s adult son Ernest, my sister Katrina, Katrina’s long-time boyfriend Max, Katrina’s adult son George, George’s wife Aubrey, Aubrey’s adult daughter Clovis, Clovis’s husband Hector, Clovis & Hector’s baby Juanita, Katrina’s adult daughter Kimberly, Kimberly’s young daughter Doris, and my mom, and me. Hmmm — that’s 25 people, but when I counted faces at the table it was 28, so I’ve forgotten three Hollands, sorry.
I love ’em all (well, except Lenny, Gem, Hakeem, Hector, and Juanita, none of whom I’d even met before), but I’m never at my best in a crowd, and this was a crowd.
Dick spent twenty minutes talking about how wonderful some recent episodes of Focus on the Family had been — that’s a hatemonger Republican radio show — but he was far enough down the table I had to strain to hear him, so I simply stopped straining.
Clay & Karen talked at length about a movie they’re looking forward to, which turned out to be Melania, the upcoming big-budget documentary and kiss-on-the-cheek for President Trump’s third wife.
Tom, who’s hardcore libertarian, talked for a while about oppressive laws that overrule his freedom, but he was seated far away, near Dick, so after he said health inspections for restaurants are an immoral idea, I was able to tune him out.
During most of my lunch, I talked with my closest tablemates, Leon and Anna. They’re nice. They’re not Republicans. They’re not nuts.
Afterwards, I was supposed to accompany Katrina, Mom, Clay, Karen, Dick, Young-suk, George, Aubrey, Clovis, Hector, Kimberly, and Doris to visit my other sister Hazel at the nursing home, but lunch had taken two hours and 45 minutes, and whatever fires had fueled me through feeble conversation, only smoldering coals remained.
And I shouldn’t tell this part, but what the heck. Good taste is not my forte: My bowels stirred toward the end of lunch, so I excused myself to use the men’s room, which should be an unimportant few minutes. And most days, it would be, because despite my old age and dilapidated physical state, I can usually do anything an adult needs to do. Once in a while, though, for no reason I’ve been able to figure out, I can’t quite reach my ass to wipe it, so of course, today was a day I couldn’t get there.
The upper tip of my ass was the farthest I could reach with a wad of toilet tissue. Three times I tried, but no matter how I twisted my torso and stretched my back and arm, the TP came an inch and a half short of where it needed to be. My poop had the consistency of a thick stew, and much of it stuck to the sides of my buttcheeks, so I returned to the table with an itchy, squishy ass, said “Great to see you” to everyone, apologized for not being able to visit Hazel, had an itchy, squishy ride home on the bus, then immediately stripped and stepped into my shower.
If a big get-together like this is going to be the family’s new day-after-Christmas tradition, I respect and even appreciate that, and I’ll be there next year, if I’m still anywhere.
But even without my ass issues, today was a completely different social event than me taking Leon to lunch. I am exhausted, and feel cheated out of my relaxing, enjoyable time with my buddy Leon. Next year, we’re having lunch on Xmas, just him and me.
12/26/2025
Leave a Reply