Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2016-52

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IN THIS ISSUE

• In this Heroic Story, a family is surprised by Christmas kindness
• Burke Dykes sends tips on Christmas eating
• Tom Telfer forwards a story of a secret Santa
• Halifax sends a Christmas tree to Boston each year
• Barbara Wear shares the story of a colonoscopy
• Sites are suggested by Barbara Wear, Catherine Nesbitt, Don Henderson, Judith English, Judy Lee, Shirley Coutts, and Tom Telfer

From Heroic.Stories, here is a story by Lisa Swindler of South Carolina:

THE ENVELOPE

In 1998, a week before Thanksgiving, I took our 10-month-old baby daughter to the doctor for a check-up. The nurse commented on how well she looked. Fifteen minutes later we were headed to the hospital emergency room. Ruth´s oxygen level was below 90 and she was having difficulty breathing. It was her fourth hospitalization that year.

Ruth had stopped breathing twice in six months, and was on steroids after being diagnosed as a severe asthmatic. This time they discovered that her stomach acid was going into her lungs; this along with asthma made breathing difficult for her.

Five days later, two days before Thanksgiving, we were able to take her home. Her three-year-old brother Kyle was excited to have his baby sister home; he´s always been eager to help "baby Ruth."

My husband Sam and I took turns giving our daughter her breathing treatments every two hours around the clock. Thanksgiving came and went despite our sheer exhaustion. Two days after Thanksgiving, the smoke detector in our home went off at 5:30 a.m. The kitchen was in flames, the house filled with smoke.

The fire department saved our home, but since the entire house had smoke damage, our daughter could not live there. With our very sick 10-month-old and rambunctious three-year-old Kyle, we moved into a motel nearby. We weren´t feeling very thankful.

Our real struggles had just begun. I carried the insurance for our family, so I had to work. Sam stayed in the motel with our children by day, cleaned our home by night, and fought with the insurance company. They were denying the medical necessity for our daughter to be in a smoke-free environment.

For over two weeks we had to pay everything out of pocket, including meals eaten out. I tried to keep my spirits up around my family, but at work it was very difficult to smile.

Christmas was a week away. We didn´t have the first gift for the children, we had no tree. We hoped our son wouldn´t realize Christmas was coming, but no luck. Kyle played with "baby Ruth," telling her about Santa Claus and the toys he would bring her. Between living expenses and medications, Sam and I were at the bottom of the barrel in funds. Christmas looked bleak.

Six days before Christmas, one of my friends at work asked me to come to the break room. She hugged me and handed me an envelope. In it was $700! My co-workers - my friends - knew that my family needed help. They knew I would never ask for it.

At one of the lowest times in my life I was suddenly the happiest. I cried, and went around to thank everyone in the office; I put pride aside and opened up to those who cared. We were able to buy gifts for Christmas, get a Christmas tree, and pay our motel bill. By Christmas day, we were back in our home - with a renewed faith in mankind.

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Burke Dykes shares these suggestions:

HOLIDAY EATING TIPS

1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they´re serving rum balls.

2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. It´s rare. You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It´s not as if you´re going to turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It´s a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It´s later than you think. It´s Christmas!

3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That´s the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they´re made with skim milk or whole milk. If it´s skim, pass. Why bother? It´s like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people´s food for free. Lots of it. Hello?

6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year´s. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you´ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don´t budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They´re like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you´re never going to see them again.

8. Same for pies. Apple, pumpkin, mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or if you don´t like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?

9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it´s loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.

10. One final tip: If you don´t feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven´t been paying attention. Re-read tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.

Tom Telfer forwards this story by Irma Kniivila:

I HATE SECRET SANTA

Every year, Valdine Ciwko warns her class just how wrong this annual gift-giving game can go. As the calendar flips to December, I brace myself for the cry of Can we do Secret Santa? from my students. I cringe.

Suddenly, I am back in Winnipeg. It is December 22, 1967, at Harrow School, and I am nine years old. The room is filled with tacky reindeer and snowflakes dangling from the ceiling, with toilet-paper rolls loosely resembling Yule logs.

There´s a tree at the front, lights twinkling, an ornament we´ve each brought from home hanging on it, and packages piled below - one for each of us in the class with tags that say, From: Guess Who? and lots more for Mrs. Yaskiw.

The fancy wrapped box near the tree is almost overflowing with tins of Campbell´s soup or corn or peas, pasta boxes and Froot Loops - all donations for families in need. The window ledge is filled with treats for our party that will begin after afternoon recess.

When the bell rings, we bundle ourselves up for the blast of cold that is Winnipeg in December and we are all outside sliding, buzzing with excitement and anticipation of the holidays. Yet I notice another buzz of excitement; everyone is looking in my direction as they talk behind mittens, pointing and laughing.

At least that´s how it seems to me. The boys are huddled together, pushing and shoving, deciding who will next be elected to race over to the girls on a reconnaissance mission to find out what we know.

They buzz back and forth like the now long-dead flies of summer.

Stephen Duff got your name! one shouts.

Hope you get to open your present first! another chants, and they all race off laughing.

We girls have our own stealth manoeuvres and soon, Rosemary, who is a year older and has a few key connections among the boys, returns with the terrible truth.

She knows what Secret Santa is giving me. There are whispers and condolences and sincere hopes that maybe the boys are wrong.

I thought Stephen was my friend. He even has the same birthday as me. Of all the things under $2 at Clarks Department Store, he can´t possibly have done that, can he?

Maybe he didn´t buy the gift. Maybe his mom thought it was a perfectly pretty little gift for a girl? An innocent mistake? But then, maybe she didn´t buy it. Maybe he did, as a good-humoured joke, only it doesn´t feel at all humorous at this moment and I´m actually feeling a little sick.

I don´t want recess to end. I want to just run off the playground and all the way home. I don´t care any more that there are Old Dutch barbecue potato chips to be eaten, Coca Cola to drink, sugar cookies with sprinkles, and candy canes to crunch. I just really want to go home. But both mom and dad were at work.

The bell rings, my palms are sweaty, in spite of how cold it is outside. My heart is pounding in my chest and I am trying to pretend the tears in my eyes are from the cold and not from the soon-to-arrive public humiliation.

Mercifully, my name is not the first one drawn.

We all watch and wait with baited breath to see who got what.

Yet, all these years later, I remember none of those gifts but mine.

I do remember when Mrs. Yaskiw called my name and handed me the soft, squishy package. But I didn´t rip at the paper or pull at the bow.

Instead, I calmly pronounced, I can´t open this now. My mom says we can only open one gift before Christmas Day. And it can only be on Christmas Eve night. And it can only be the one for me from my Auntie Mary in Germany from the box of treasures she sends us each year. But I´ll put this one under the tree till Christmas Day. Thank you, Secret Santa, whoever you are.

Looks all around.

Slight disappointment on the faces of some of the boys, giggles and cajoling and coaxing, Oh come on! Just open it!

But I stand fast. Maybe it´s the look on my face that Mrs. Yaskiw responds to and she lets me quickly hide the package in my bag.

The food is all gone, the records back in their sleeves, the classroom cleaned, our bags packed with reindeer and wobbly Yule logs for the vacation. We´re bundled and wrapped and lined up to go.

The bell rings and I shoot out the door, my friend Rosemary waiting down the hall for me.

We run all the way to her house, midway home for me, open the back door to the little landing where the stairs lead down to the basement, three steps up to her kitchen. We yank our mitts off and I fling the squishy package on the top step.

Now I rip off the wrapping. It was true! There in my hands is a pair of white full-brief panties delicately decorated with the days of the week to wrap around my little cheeks!

December arrives. I still hate Secret Santa.

And just the other day, one of my students called out, Can we pleeeease do Secret Santa?

I didnt answer immediately. Well, I said. First, let me tell you a little story....

THE BOSTON CHRISTMAS TREE

On December 6, 1917, at 9:04 a.m., the Halifax Explosion destroyed much of the city. Boston authorities learned of the disaster via telegraph, and quickly organized and dispatched a relief train around 10:00 p.m. that night, to assist survivors. A blizzard following the explosion delayed the train, which finally arrived in the early morning on December 8, and immediately began distributing food, water, and medical supplies. Many personnel on the train were able to relieve the Nova Scotia medical staff, most of whom had worked without rest since the explosion occurred.

In 1918, Halifax sent a Christmas tree to the City of Boston in thanks and remembrance for the help that the Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee had provided immediately after the disaster. That gift was revived in 1971 by the Lunenburg County Christmas Tree Producers Association, who began an annual donation of a large tree to promote Christmas tree exports as well as to acknowledge Boston´s support after the explosion. The gift was later taken over by the Nova Scotia Government to continue the goodwill gesture.

(Click on image to enlarge)

The tree is Boston´s official Christmas tree and is lit on Boston Common throughout the holiday season. Knowing its symbolic importance to both cities, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources has specific guidelines for selecting the tree. It must be an attractive balsam fir, white spruce, or red spruce, 12 to 16 metres (40 to 50 ft.) tall, healthy with good colour, medium to heavy density, uniform and symmetrical, and easy to access.

For the Christmas tree extension specialist in charge of locating it, the "tree can be elusive, the demands excessive, and the job requires remembering the locations of the best specimens in the province, and persuading the people who own them to give them up for a pittance." Most donors are "honoured to give up their trees, and most will gladly watch their towering trees fall," since everyone knows the reason it is being sent to Boston. The trees don´t often come from tree farms, but instead from open land where they can grow tall and full. It is so important to the people of Nova Scotia that "people have cried over it, argued about it, even penned song lyrics in its honour."

Barbara Wear sends this piece by Dave Barry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald:

COLONOSCOPY JOURNAL

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn´t really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, "HE´S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!"

I left Andy´s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called "MoviPrep," which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America ´s enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.

Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn´t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-litre plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a litre is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, "a loose, watery bowel movement may result."

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don´t want to be too graphic here, but have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another litre of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, "What if I spurt on Andy?" How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.

At first I was ticked off that I hadn´t thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was "Dancing Queen" by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, "Dancing Queen" had to be the least appropriate.

"You want me to turn it up?" said Andy, from somewhere behind me....

"Ha ha," I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling "Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine," and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

SUGGESTED SITES

Barbara Wear, Catherine Nesbitt, and Tom Telfer forward this link to a seasonal performance of the US Air Force Band in a holiday flashback to the ´40s:

Don Henderson and Zvonko Springer suggest this video of a holiday feast for animals:

Judith English forwards the URL for a video of Mog´s Christmas, a tale of sharing:

Judy Lee forwards this link to a Christmas line dance party:

Shirley Coutts forwards the URL for a video which illustrates the difficulties encountered by people suffering from Tourette Syndrome:

Tom Telfer suggests this site, in which an elegant Mrs. Claus is the star of a heartwarming holiday short by Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper:

Tom also forwards this link to a nostalgic song about Christmas long ago:

Even here on the Wet Coast we occasionally find our windows frosted over. Here are some hints on how to deal with this winter problem:

From the GoodNewsNetwork, these underprivileged children choose gifts for their parents instead of for themselves:

For 10 funny Christmas editions of "Simon´s Cat," click on

This video about relative times shows, among far more important things, that I am older than sliced bread!

To check out the features of the "freedictionary," which changes daily, go to