Yes Virginia

I don’t know why kids like these "Instant Messenger" things on the computer so well. Student’s tell me how they talk with their friends at all hours of the night on their instant messenger. If their folks have a separate phone line for the internet, girls can talk about a boy with their friends on the computer while talking to the actual boy on the phone.

I never have liked the Instant Messengers. Whenever I’m on the computer, I’m trying to get something done, to have people keep popping on trying to talk to me ends up just being an interruption. But I have to tell you, I had the most interesting conversation online the other day and I thought I might share it with you, gentle readers.

BigRedGuy:: Hey Ted, how R U? Feel like a chat?

coachmallory:: Who is this?

BigRedGuy:: My screen name ought to give it away.

coachmallory:: Frank Solich?

BigRedGuy:: No ho ho ho, if I were him I wouldn’t want to talk to a member of the press. Try again, I’ll give you a clue- I know when you’ve been sleeping…I know if you’ve been bad or good.

coachmallory:: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge?

BigRedGuy:: Ho ho, no, but I’m almost as busy.

coachmallory:: Santa? Wow, why would you take time out of your busiest time of year to instant message me?

BigRedGuy:: Well, Ted, I just wanted to thank all the business people of Charter Oak for all the work they went through to make my visit there such a success for the children in your community. Since you have a weekly column in the NEWSpaper, I thought you were a natural resource for me to tap.

coachmallory:: Happy to help, Santa. It certainly was a blast. I know my little girls loved it. They got to see you and received a bag full of goodies, watched cartoons, munched on cookies, won prizes and played with all their friends from all over the area.

BigRedGuy:: Well, Charter Oak has had a long tradition of bringing me to see the kids.

coachmallory:: Oh I know! My wife Bethany was telling me about how when she was little, you gave them all a bag of peanuts and popcorn, then they’d all sit down to watch 8mm movies on a screen in the corner of the Community Building.

BigRedGuy:: And inevitably some naughty little boy would start throwing peanuts or popcorn at the screen or at one of his little friends and bedlam would soon ensue, Ho Ho!

coachmallory:: Well I bet there were quite a few boys in town who’d get coal in their stockings because of that, huh?

BigRedGuy:: Well, now you know Ted, I don’t think of myself as the purveyor of justice that a lot of people seem to think I am. The rain falls on both the just and the unjust, you know.

coachmallory:: So, you just bring presents to children, no coal?

BigRedGuy:: That’s right. I represent generosity, not vengeance, that belongs to the Lord you know, Ho Ho. And even He prefers mercy to sacrifice, you know. Besides, there are too many children who won’t have much of a Christmas at all, let alone a merry one. I don’t think they should be denied just for throwing a little popcorn.

coachmallory:: But what about that legendary list?

BigRedGuy:: Let me tell you something, my list is a lot longer than that 12,000 page Iraqi weapons of mass destruction dossier. I’ve gotten rid of most of the paperwork though, nowadayz it’s all digital. All I have to carry around is my personal electronic organizer. It’s really more of a shopping list than a naughty/nice thing- you have to be REALLY bad to get on the naughty side. I’ll let you in on a secret though, there’s not enough coal in West Virginia for Saddam and Osama’s stockings.

¡Feliz Navidad!

Growing up in Phoenix, my Michigander cousins would often pity us for never getting to enjoy a white Christmas. Usually I’d let it go, sorta like when they’d ask if we had to shake the snakes and scorpions out of our boots before we hiked to school. Eventually, I had had enough and sat them down with a globe for a history lesson.

"Look," I’d say, "here’s Bethlehem, see? Follow this line of latitude around and what do you notice about Phoenix?"

"Hmmm," they’d inevitably reply.

"Yeah, well, see, same latitude, similar weather patterns, so BACK OFF," I’d boast. I didn’t bother going into how at Lutheran elementary school we’d learned that Bible scholars suspect that Christ may have actually been born in April anyway.

I’ll admit though, that living in the subtropics doesn’t present an environment in line with the quintessential American ideal of a holiday season. This occurred to me just the other day at school. I set up a cardboard fireplace and hung stockings for Cheerleaders and Yearbook staffers. A student asked me "what’s the fireplace for," before I could explain about the stockings another kid answered, "for Santa, DUH!"

"But he comes down the chimney, there’s no chimney here."

I tried for years in vain to get my parents to move to a house with a fireplace for that very reason. But you don’t NEED a fireplace in Phoenix. It’s a desert. Perhaps to humor me, my parents would put up a decorative cardboard fireplace from Sears.

"But we don’t have a chimney," I’d protest.

"Well, uh, um, that’s Okay, Santa will come down our air conditioning vent ducts." Apparently that satisfied me. I mean, really, think about it, if a 300 pound, 500 year old man in a red velvet suit can circumnavigate the earth in one night with flying reindeer and fit down a chimney flue- he can fit through our AC unit and pop out our cardboard fireplace. It’s "Christmas Magic."

Iowegians may enjoy cookies, cocoa and casseroles, but one of my favorite memories were the tamales dad brought home at Christmas from a Mexican deli near the airport where he worked. It may have only been one or two years, but my memory elevated it to the stature of tradition.

A really neat Christmas tradition we had was going to the Sisters’. The Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary was a cloister of Lutheran nuns. That’s right, all you Catholics (and Lutherans) who just did a double take. The story was that a Sunday school class of girls were in the only building not destroyed when the allies bombed Darmstadt Germany. They pledged their life to the Lord. Their leader, Mother Basilea Schlink could drop names like Deitrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom.

Their compound, Kanaan in the desert was in the shadows of Mummy Mountain. Ironically, just miles away from a POW camp for NAZI sailors during WWII. Some of them had escaped with a map and a raft, headed for the Salt River, little did they know that the Salt is a dry wash bed 11 ½ months out of year.

At any rate, these Lutheran nuns in the middle of the desert, like that Sidney Potier movie "Lilies of the Field," had the greatest Christmas cookies and tea, and elaborate German decorations around a Nativity scene where everyone would sing and listen to the Christmas message. All us tiny kids got to ring bells and tambourines. Instead of a tree, they used juniper branches. It smelled great.

Don’t believe in Lutheran nuns? Check out their website at www.kanaan.org

You can’t imagine all the poinsettias in Phoenix. At the art museum there was always a display of trees, the best ones were made of potted poinsettias. Of course it just wasn’t Christmas without a few wreaths made of chili peppers.

No, we didn’t have snowmen, but lots of people liked to decorate their Saguaro cacti with Santa costumes or spray tumbleweeds with flocking and stack them on top of each other to make "Frosty the tumble-weed man."

Luminaries and the celebration of ‘La Posada’ (Mary and Joseph trying to find a room at the Inn, the Posada) is a powerful image of Christmas for me. So are little Indian children and angels by southwestern artist Ted Degrazia. Arizona Highways always had the most beautiful pictures of Spanish missions or the Grand Canyon dusted with a little snow, you can probably see some at www.arizhwys.com.

I admit it, when it’s 3° out and I have to shovel snow I sometimes miss the bougainvilleas and balmy breezes, but now I get to cuddle under flannel sheets and sip hot cocoa. And just the other day, as we were driving through the countryside, my daughter gets to spy a heard of does in the corn stubble and announce to us that she sees "Reindeer!"

Murphy's Law & Order

In case you hadn’t noticed, Mallory isn’t German, it’s Scotch-Irish. My mother’s maiden name is Reilly. Shortened from O’Reilly, as Irish as you can get.

Now, I’ve known quite a few Irishmen in my time. O’Sullivan were good people, I can’t say as I ever got a long too well with any O’Briens, but most of the Murphy’s I’ve known have been really fun to know.

Most of them, that is, except for one. The one who was in Congress. At least I assume he was in Congress, because he’s got a low named after him. You know the one, "Murphy’s Law." It’s one of the shortest laws in the U.S. Code, all it says is "If anything can go wrong, it will."

I think it was co-sponsored by Congressman Morton. I think this because the box of Morton’s Salt reads "When it rains, it pours," these two sentiments inevitably go together, at least in my life.

For whatever reason, Ellie, our 11 month-old never needs a diaper change until, Gracie, our 3 year old has an accident. And for reasons I can not explain, Gracie only seems to have accidents just after my wife Bethany has gone out the door to some meeting at school. Does this kind of scenario sound at all familiar to any of you?

I think it’s time Murphy’s Law was changed. Maybe we could start a letter writing campaign to get this Murphy character removed from office. All I know is, we have to do something.

What I’ve learned to do is to obey the law. Better to go along with it and ride it out to the end than try to break it, you’ll always get caught. Here’s an example of what I mean-

So, I was trying to get this Thanksgiving dinner thing going for Church (huge thanks to all you LYF kids & parents for pulling it off by the way). At any rate, we had our computer serviced and in the process, last year’s notes and letters on the dinner got erased.

I forgot to order the potatoes from Staley’s, they agree to get them for us anyway, I don’t know how much to order for and between their move and personnel changes, they can’t find our records either. My mind remembers our Ash Wednesday Soup Supper and tells them we expect maybe sixty people. Not a problem, they’ll have the bags of potato mix ready for me to pick up whenever I can come get them.

Friday night I picked up a movie at Citgo and pulled in across from the Oak’s Club to pick up an order of Chicken. If Murphy’s law hadn’t already been in effect, it was just about to. I figured I’d only be a minute or two so why not leave the engine running, it’s a small town and a cool night.

I closed the car door and started for the bar, and start to saunter across the street, but get yanked back like a dog tied to a tree in the middle of the yard. The corner of my coat was caught in the car door.

"No sweat," I thought, "I’ll open the door and release my coat" No dice, the door was locked. "Well, okay, it’s just a few blocks, I’ll walk home to get my spare set of keys. Oh, yeah, I forgot, my coat’s caught in the door and it’s really cold. Hmmm. I could stand here and look nonchalant in my coat, and wait for Bethany to bring the extra set of keys, oh, yeah, I pretty much have to call her to let her know I need the keys."

"Hmm, Okay," I said to myself, "I’ll slip off my coat and nonchalantly, leave it on the ground next to the car and walk into the bar, pay for the chicken and ask to use their phone. Geez, there’s a lot of people in there. I don’t need the whole town knowing I locked my keys in my car- while it was running." Then I noticed the lights in the lobby of Staley’s- "Great, I thought, I can use their phone, isn’t there something I need there anyway? Oh yeah, the potatoes for Sunday."

Guess what, who ever was there didn’t answer when I asked if anyone was there. "Shoot, I can’t use the phone without asking, well, it’s not long distance, maybe they won’t mind- hey this way, even they won’t have to know how dumb I was." I call home, go figure- thanks to Murphy’s Law, Bethany is giving the girls a bath and can’t get to the phone. I leave a message, but our answering machine is downstairs in the den, she’d never hear it. I call back four times, hoping that one of the times she’ll at least hear the phone and check the messages. Each time my message was more anxious, the fifth time I called I was down right irritated- Murphy’s Law again, that’s the time she picks up, why would she want to help my when I’m so crabby? And, Murpy’s law, that’s when Allan Staley comes out of the kitchen with me on his phone.

Well, the happy ending is that she bundled the girls up in their pajamas and came with the keys so that I could bring the car, my coat, the potatoes and the chicken home without being too embarrassed. Of course I had to call the next day and ask Rick and Al if they would prepare the potatoes AND gravy for us, like they have every other year and make enough for 200, rather than just 60. Thank God, and Rick and Al, they could, would and did. Whew!

Best of all, no one except Bethany and Al Staley ever knew about the whole thing with me locking my keys in my car. Well, that is, until now.