Blood under teh tree. That's right: teh tree.

Here’s a telephone conversation I had when I was maybe five or six, around Christmas:

MY MOM’S FRIEND: Hi, Timmy.

ME: Hi.

MMF: You excited for Christmas?

ME: Yeah.

MMF: I got you some Christmas presents today.

ME: Whoa! Really?

MMF: Can you guess what I got you?

ME: What?!

MMF: Underwear!

ME: …

MMF: Timmy?

ME: Just underwear? That’s it?

My parents were mortified and I got a lecture. Years later I felt selfish and embarrassed but now, looking back…what the fuck? Underwear? That bitch is lucky I didn’t swear her out. "Thanks, lady! Now I can swaddle my undescended testes in clean, fresh cotton! Nothing like fresh Hanes to help the Joes put the hurt on Cobra Commander!"

BONUS: This may have been the cause of my mother’s infamous admonition that "some kids don’t get presents for Christmas, some kids just get a beating." She tossed it out there idly, and I, in the passenger seat, said something like “……..whooooooa. Really?”

“What?”

“Do some kids really just get a beating for Christmas?”

“...yes.”

This is how I imagined it (I swear this is dead accurate, strangely one of my most vivid memories of a daydream): a festive living room, green wallpaper, a tree, the soft twinkle of myriad Christmas lights turning everything blue then green then red then white. Crystal dishware everywhere, elegant ornaments. A mother and father happily call up the stairs for their son, who bounds down, grinning widely, awaiting his holiday caning. Why? Were all his transgressions written down when they happened so that punishment could be dealt just once a year, in one festive mauling? Or was there no reason for the beating aside from the holiday? Was it purely celebratory?