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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. 'Twas the night I sleighed Rudolf by J. G. Fabiano Most Christmas seasons are usually defined by a specific event. This is usually the type of moment that one never forgets and is forever associated with that specific holiday. Most are happy situations that produce memories that include family and friends. However, every now and then a year arrives that precipitates a type of memory one would rather forget but is destined to always remember. I had that kind of Christmas experience become a future memory, a few days ago.Granted it was before Christmas day but Christmas 2001, will forever be engrained in my memory bank because of a day that began with a family Christmas party that happened a couple of Sundays before Christmas Day.
My Debbie's side of the family has an odd tradition. They all meet in Framingham, Massachusetts for a holiday celebration a few days before Christmas week. They meet at one of her sister's house where the food and drink flow quite freely. For the past couple of years a new tradition has raised its ugly head. It is a game called, a present swap.The concept of the present swap is to have each family bring a present. The present should have a value of not over $20.00. Numbers are attached to the gifts and all those who are part of the game then pick a number to show them when it is their turn to pick a present of their choice. Basically this game seems innocent enough but there is one glitch about it. If you choose your present first and then someone else, who likes your present, picks another present, they can swap what they don't want with what you have. The result of this game can be quite interesting especially since my family is a combination of Italian and Jewish heritage. I like to call it Gewappi but we can talk about this particular subject another time. The men are rarely, if ever, part of the game for obvious reasons. We have a tendency to want to survive. The men are found screaming in front of a television set rooting on our New England Patriots of whom we all know are destined to lose. For some odd reason they have been winning this season but like our beloved Red Sox, they are soon destined to fail. We all know this but would rather be anywhere else other then upstairs playing the game. For some strange act of fate the game ends about the same time as the football game. This usually means it is time to get our gift that we all know we hate and, off to home, we drive. The drive, like most other drives, promotes little interest. My wife never makes it out of Massachusetts without falling asleep and I set the cruise to a little over the speed limit, listen to a favorite CD, and basically waste a little bit of my life trying not to get hit by others who are also driving home. This particular trip was no different until I was about one mile from my house traveling north on Route One. All of a sudden both my wife and I was startled back to reality. WHAM !! The whole car shook and at that instant I had no idea as to what had just happened. The first thing my wife did was ask me what I did? Then she looked straight ahead and stated quite matter-of-factly, "You hit a deer". For a second I had no idea how she knew this but then she told me that she saw its head. Since this was pretty good evidence I decided to believe her. I also knew that this would be the beginning of some interesting discussions. Since I was close to home and it was pitch black on the road I decided not to stop and drive home. The next day many people asked me why I didn't stop to see if the deer was ok. I told them that if the deer was still alive I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be in a good mood. If the deer was not ok, my expertise on saving an animal that probably weighs more than me was not that good. So, I decided to drive home, call the police, and then meet them back to where I thought the accident had occurred. The officer was exceptional. He talked to me in a calm tone that made me calm down. One of the first things he asked me was if I hit the deer on Route One? I told him I did but at the same time I wondered whether the officer thought I had driven through the woods in my Toyota Camry looking for dinner. He also asked me if I was certain that I hit a deer? We both walked over to the front quarter of my car and noticed that what was left of the fender had fur. We both decided that it was a deer that I hit. The next day I called my insurance company and told them that I hit a deer and had sustained about $3000.00 worth of damage. The first thing they asked me is if I did everything I could to miss the deer. Hell, I thought to myself, I didn't even see it and, if I had a choice between a tree and a deer, I think I would have chosen the deer. I told them that I did and they told me to drop it over to a body shop where the work could be done. I was also told that I had rental insurance and that I could get a rental the next day until the work was done. My pre-holiday experience was starting to get better. When I arrived at work the next day all my male colleagues were mad at me. They were not disappointed that I hit a deer. They were upset because I did not take the deer to eat and thus give them some excess venison. I thought to myself that that action would have really helped to calm my wife. I could see me trying to tie the deer to the trunk of my car at the same time she was sobbing and telling me that I just killed Bambi. Plus what would I do with it when I got it home. The tallest tree I have is only 5 feet tall and the prospect of hanging it out one of the windows of my house did not seem that plausible. The best comment of the day was made by one of the custodians at my school. He laughingly told me that, "my car was one hell of an expensive bullet." At the end of school day I drove to the body shop to pick up the rental car. This is where my experience made another turn for the worse. I drove the car over to Shop n' Save to pick up some things that my wife told me we needed. Since I was the murderer of 'all that was innocent' I decided to do everything she asked me to do. Leaving the store I came to the realization that I had no idea what car I had just picked up, no concept of the color because it was dark when I picked it up, and because I was still a bit shaken I totally forgot where I parked it. For the next few minutes I stood in the middle of the parking lot, praying that I would soon find my new lost rented vehicle. I decided to wander around hopelessly looking into different vehicles of which I thought were of similar size and hoped that something inside the car would look familiar. I think I scared a few people, especially the ones that were waiting in their cars, and I even tried to start a few of them unsuccessfully with my key. God must have felt pity for me because in about a half an hour I found the lost car. At the same time I was just thankful that I wasn't posting bail for attempted grand theft auto. Christmas 2001 will be forever defined in my mind by a specific event, for this was the year I sleighed Rudolf! The End
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