Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 126
Good old-fashioned
Christmas subterfuge
W
ith two weeks yet
to go in the Christmas season, you’re
probably already feeling the
stress, and the holiday hostility in the air is as thick as
whipped gingerbread latte.
I mean, you can’t come
within a half-mile of the mall
without getting stuck in a
wreath-wrapped road-rage
parade.
Should you actually set foot
in a super store — well, let’s
just say the “human interactions” will make professional
Walker
Continued from A1
Christmas cards.
It’s brutal out there. But the
worst could be yet to come.
That is, unless you know how
to employ a little seasonal subterfuge.
You see, you’ve most likely got
lots of holiday social gatherings to
attend or, worse yet, to host.
Most of these swarmings are
probably the result of traditions
foisted upon you by family, friendship or places of employment —
all of which are things absent in a
perfect world.
But we live in an imperfect
world, one where you are expected to pretend you like fruitcake,
and to grin and ignore the flying
nut-chunks peppering your face as
Uncle Mort sprays his latest tale of
p-political p-paranoia.
So, in an effort to maintain a
false air of geniality and gentility amongst folk you’d like to
see come down with shingles,
one must turn to gracious socialsleight-of-hand.
Basically, using these techniques,
you thumb your nose at these people, but do it so artfully they want to
name their descendants after you.
We find our holiday-gathering
ploys come in two categories: Those
suitable for dodging these lemmingmarches altogether, and those more
suited to ducking discomfort once
people have you cornered.
Preparty ploys
Oh, no, I won’t: Most likely,
any party or dinner haunting your
schedule was inked-in there by
one of life’s jailHrs, such as a
spouse, boss, clientt orHccentric
aunt. And if you are sentenced to
attend someone else’s party, it’s no
sweat.
The old “car broke down”
excuse is still classically viable.
However, if your wife really wants
to go, you will have to induce your
car to actually break down on the
way.
But a couple of hundred dollars
to clean the sugar out of the gas
tank is well worth it to avoid three
days of recovery from your mother-in-law’s mystery-meat schnitzel, right?
Map maneuver: Even if you are
so dizzy you actually send out invitations for people to come to
your house and torture you, you
Jim
WALKER
DON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY
hockey look warm and fuzzy.
And I’ve heard that at the
post office, people are actually slicing each other up with
still have ways to confuse them —
including, literally, getting them
lost on the way.
Now sometimes MapQuest will
deliver your guests to the wrong
destination all on its own. But you
can’t rely on this.
To ensure Mort-and-the-clan get
lost in the wilderness on the way
to your house, print bogus invitations with directions to the swamp.
Later, you can blame the “errors” on the print shop. But remember, Mort probably has your
phone number already, so turn up
the music really loud.
Holi-daze: Unfortunately, some
people already know where you
live. Here, the date of the party is
your best bullet.
While it’s hard to confuse folks
about the month of your holiday get-together, it’s fairly easy to
dupe them into arriving on the Friday you are out of town.
Again, “printer error” is usable. However, if your wife invites
them over the phone, well, a timely power failure is your best option
to turn them away at the curb.
Dances of deception
Living large: Assuming you
were asleep at the wheel and
See WALKER, A9
somehow failed to head things
off, you may f ind yourself actually trapped in a room with
holiday revelers. To extricate yourself from this predicament, you again have two
categories of action: large or
small.
On the large side, you have
no end of party-ending maneuvers
available. Certainly, there is fire.
Most holiday parties have candles
or open flames of some sort just
waiting to be put to a higher purpose.
In buildings with fire-suppression sprinklers, you don’t actually
have to burn anything.
And, beyond fire, or the threat
of it, there are also self-inflicted
knife wounds, falling down stairs
and the ever-effective dancing
with the Doberman.
Drawbacks to the above may include late-night visits to the hospital or police station, as well as
time off work — which is not really a drawback at all.
And, if you handle yourself
well, you might even be able to
tag the owner of the establishment
with a lawsuit (assuming he is not
you). Talk about your holiday giving. ...
This is too easy: On the smaller side, maybe you like to stay out
of the spotlight (and the emergency room) and also get a sadistic
satisfaction out of being a puppet
master, subtly manipulating siblings or married couples or even
complete strangers into going
at each other like pit bulls. And
when the wrestling starts, the
party floods out the exits.
Take Mort, for example. No
one likes his opinions and he is
always itching to give them. All
you need do to escape the evening is say the word “government” and old Morty is off and
running.
If you put him face-to-face
with someone of the opposite
paranoia, and add in alcohol,
you’ve got a party-ending climax
coming.
So just remember. If you can
keep your wits about you and
trick others into losing theirs ...
well, you’ll have the best holidays
ever, unencumbered by the need
to interact.
Jim Walker is Escape Editor
at The Signal, and he will be attending the company party — so
watch out.
jwalker@the-signal.com
