The closest we get to an eternity in this life is the time between going downstairs on Christmas morning and actually being able to tear into those parcels under the tree. Growing up in the 1960s with two younger brothers made this a test beyond the scope of human endurance. Give me waterboarding anytime–please! Just get me through this!
We sprang out of bed as soon as our eyes opened…usually right around 5:00am. There was the frantic sprint to the living room. That took around 6 1/2 seconds. Then there was the quick scan to see if there were any gifts too big or odd-shaped to wrap. (The occasional bike or sled created a temporary sense of well-being. Then we knew that our torture session would be only about 95% of its original intensity.) That whole process ate up another 3 1/2 seconds.
So here we are ten seconds into our eternity and the pathetic reality begins to set in. Mom and Dad said we can’t wake them up until 7:00am. ARE YOU KIDDING?!!!!!!! How are we going to make it that long?!! We can’t do two hours of this!! Where’s my brown paper bag?
That’s it. Calm down….breathe easy. Then another ray of hope….we are allowed to open the gifts in our stockings. That feels like a band-aid on a compound fracture, but we’ll take anything at this point to help deaden the pain. The stockings were usually candy and other small stuff, but we made it work for us. We’d take turns and open one at a time to eat up the clock, still watching it seeming to be at a stand-still. Why can’t time go this slow when we’re out playing with friends, building shacks in the woods and riding our bikes? Ok, we opened all the stocking gifts….
WHAT?!!! It’s only 5:08am????!!!!! NO WAY!!!!! I’ll die of old age before 7:00am gets here!
Thus set in the eternity of Yuletide. We just sat there in front of the tree staring at the gifts…and staring at the gifts…and staring…and staring…and staring. We tried to pass the time speculating their contents. That took another thirty seconds. We would check out the stockings once again to make sure we hadn’t missed anything…another fifteen seconds. We’d stack our gifts and compare the height of the piles…maybe two minutes. It’s torture I tell you…cruel and unusual punishment!!!
Somehow the clock would creep its way to 7:00am and our redemption draweth nigh. Mom and Dad would stagger from their room and….let’s just say the next few minutes resembled a snow-globe that had been violently shaken. The long, frustrating, eternal torture was over.
“Hey Mom, I’m hungry. What’s for breakfast?”
*The Carol Drive Chronicles will appear on an occasional basis documenting the people and events of that unique American neighborhood in which I was raised.
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