In a moment of mental aberration, I volunteered to help my mother select gifts for her many descendants, wrap them, and send them out with my own gifts for Christmas. I hadn't really considered what this would entail. Her gifts numbered nearly seventy, of all sizes and descriptions: books, objets d'art, a scarf, jewelry, candle snuffers, a carving set, and so on: all treasures (many of them heirlooms) from her own collection and that of my late father. These I planned to box up with the books, games, and stuffed toys that Tim and I had purchased for our Kilmer-side nieces and nephews.
I got the gifts for Tim's side of the family mailed first, since that was a far smaller project: only 20 gifts, divided between two addresses. Then I put aside the gifts that would not need to be mailed, as the recipients would be in this area on or around Christmas day. I bought lots of gift-bags and boxes of different sizes, wrapping paper, and tissue paper. We had plenty of mailing boxes of all the sizes and shapes I could possibly need, which I had saved from our recent move.
So I thought.
As I wrapped, boxed, bagged, and packed, I found that there was always one gift just an inch too long to go in Box A. Another gift, destined for the same household, was just an inch too wide or too high to go in box B, which fit the long gift perfectly. In order to accommodate the wildly varying sizes and shapes of the gifts, I ended up having to pack gifts in boxes that seemed far too big for them. This necessitated using mounds and mounds of stuffing to prevent the gifts from rattling around during shipping. Alas, it would also jack up the cost of shipping. I was running out of large boxes, while I still had plenty of long skinny boxes and mid-sized cubical boxes.
Suddenly the logical solution came to me. Instead of sorting gifts according to destination, I should be sorting them by size and shape. That was the most efficient way to package them. It cut down on wasted space and packing materials, saved time, and allowed me to use the boxes I already had, rather that having to go out in search of more boxes.
So, my dear family, that is why you will be receiving packages that contain gifts for some (not all) members of your own nuclear family, and some for people who live in other states. It will be up to you all to sort things out.
Now isn't it a good thing that my own personal gift to each of my siblings and their grown children is a list of names and addresses for the whole Kilmer clan?
. . . Feel free to pass this on via email, if you like, but please include my by-line and URL:
/Athens/2104/humor.html Humor by Miriam A. Kilmer
All other rights reserved.
Hearst Hall wasn't available for Sunday, and we couldn't find a really suitable alternative. We ended up renting a small church in Maryland, with the intention of serving dinner outdoors, southern-style.
Sunday came, and we were setting up at the church. There were fixed pews toward the back of the room, but enough space up front to set up folding chairs in a hollow square. People began to arrive and seat themselves in the pews.
Suddenly someone noticed that it was raining: not just a sprinkle, but a full-fledged downpour. Now there would be no place to serve dinner!
Mimi suggested that we call off the Convention, but I couldn't see just sending everyone home. I said we could set up one line of food tables in the aisle along the left wall. When it came time to eat, we could dismantle the hollow square and set up tables for eating in the same space.
Some of us started setting the food out on the tables as I had suggested. However, we could not set up the folding chairs because the previous group was not finished with that space. They were dancers, performing an elaborately choreographed production. The dancers were: a beautiful young woman, a girl of about nine, and a chubby little blond boy not more than three years old. The two children were running at full speed while the woman danced more gracefully, but they always came together precisely with the music. A balding gentleman with a large bear belly stood at the right side of the dance floor. He wore tan knickers and an ill-fitting red vest over a wrinkled white shirt. As he was panting and sweating profusely, I took him for the young woman's dance partner. When the current dance ended, I put my arm around the sweaty gentleman to escort him out, complimenting him on the splendid performance. Then, fearing that the woman dancer would get jealous, I quickly extricated myself.
As we were setting up the hollow square, Cathy Tucker asked me to chair the convention. I accepted, and went to sit in the throne at the right side of the altar. Then Cathy and Mary Kay Friday came up and whispered in my ear, reminding me that we needed to choose the rest of the officers and the committee chairs. Since it was high time to start the singing, I suggested that the three of us circulate, finding likely volunteers and asking them which function they would prefer to perform. The first person I approached was Steven Sabol, who offered to be in charge of the food. After that, I had trouble finding Sacred Harpers that I knew: there were so many out-of-towners and newcomers! I was about to invite a friend of mine to volunteer (even though this was her first singing) when I realized that there was a flaw in my method: working separately, Cathy and Mary Kay and I might come up with duplicate volunteers for some jobs, and none for others.
The singing had already begun (someone must have volunteered to be the arranger), but at that moment a middle-aged woman who had been standing at the altar suddenly keeled over. Several men rushed to her assistance, while I made my way to the front, frantically trying to remember my CPR instructions from about twelve years ago. The men reluctantly moved aside to allow me to examine her. She was a portly woman, black-haired and, at that moment, deathly pale. We could not rouse her, but I announced that she was still breathing, and her pulse was strong. I instructed one of the men, a white-haired, beefy-faced man whom I vaguely recognized from the Shenandoah group, to call 911 and tell them we had an unconscious victim. He refused, saying he would run out and find some firemen that he knew were quite nearby. My arguments failed to dissuade him, so I went to call 911 myself.
I found a telephone on the floor in the narthex, but it was not plugged in. I went downstairs looking for a phone jack, and found that the white-haired man who had gone looking for firemen had returned without them. He had gathered some of his cohorts from the Shenandoah contingent, and they were heatedly engaged in criticizing my handling of the situation.
Angry and deeply discouraged, I returned upstairs and managed to find a phone jack. On closer examination of the telephone, I found that it was a circular model. The number buttons, which were quite large, were arranged in a semi-circle around the bottom edge. They were not in numerical order, which made it more difficult for me to find the nine and the one. Nevertheless, I did dial correctly. The phone rang at the other end, and a voice said: "What city, please?" Thinking I must have misdialed, I apologized, hung up, and tried again. The same thing happened, so I thought that maybe she was trying to determine my location. I answered: "Wheaton, Maryland."
"She's not here," said the voice on the phone. Mystified, I asked the people who had gathered around me exactly where we were. Someone handed me a map, but it was a road atlas of North America. There was not enough detail on it to determine whether we were in Wheaton or Kensington. "We're just north of the Beltway in Maryland," I said. "I think we're in Wheaton."
"I told you, she's not here," said the voice on the phone.
"For God's sake, this is supposed to be 911!" I shouted.
Then I woke up.
You all probably thought I was unconcerned about the problem of finding a space for our Sunday singing, but this story proves that I have been thinking about it, even in my sleep.
. . . Feel free to pass this on via email, if you like, but please include my by-line and URL:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2104/humor.html Humor by Miriam A. Kilmer
All other rights reserved.
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