December 25, 2010 02:43 AM UTC

Christmas Eve with Bobby

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• by: JO

Looking for a slightly twisted joke to go along with traditional decorations. Don’t want to spend too much. Dash into Big Lots in a somewhat manic mode looking for the throwaway item. Beeline to the toy shelves on the back wall.

And there she was. She and her daughter.

Something about her said single. No dad in sight. She a portrait of Weariness, pushing a junior cart with a handful of items, all small. Warily eying the shelves for what else might be left that could be bought with the available funds. Daughter around eight or nine, listlessly fingering the boxes of toys still on the shelf, knowing they would still be there when she and mom left the store. No fantasy about a jolly fat man coming in the night with a big surprise for her! No new Lexus in the driveway for her mom tomorrow morning. Just this handful of little things next to a small tree with some lights. Merry Christmas, dear daughter. Smile for me.

Damn me for not having a $20, a $50, a $100 to pick up off the floor. “Pardon me, madame, you dropped this.” Just this damn bank card; don’t want to seem weird, and who knows how that would go over anyway. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12…

So just a smile-returned.

Dickens and Tiny Tim. So it has always been. But in the carols desperate to spread some sense of joy in this desperate place, amidst the celebration of deliverance to come, the voice of Bobby: “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Don’t stop hoping. Maybe next year a merry Christmas.