Disfunctional Holiday thread! yay!

[mr_coffee]

Welp basically this is a thread dedicated to funny, sad, weird, fun, things that happened during the holiday's! It doesn't have to be christmas either!


I'll start it off!

It was Christmas eve and my brother and I were just little guys, around 12 and 13 or maybe even younger. I know I wasn't in 7th grade yet.

My mom was raising us by herself on 1 disability check so needless to say Christmas was a stressful time. Random people would bring us presents and food. We actually got a ham which was great. There also was this organization that would take needy kids on a bus and take them shopping.

My moms background history with health isn't so good, she's been on and off dialysis since the day I was born. On a ton of anti depressants and anti <insert name here> pills, she takes around 45 pills a day!

The fact that my mom could survive raising us is impressive in itself let alone all the medical issues she's had

To give you some background history before the story starts:

We knew my mom was in bad health at the time and a month before Christmas my brother and I were in an emergency room with her when the doctors said she might not make it.

Basically anytime she got a kidney transplant the pills would kill her immune system totally so a common cold could be deadly and thats what happened. Any who back to the story.

So on this night my brother and I were fighting as we usually do. He was chasing me around the house with a shovel and I was throwing random objects at him to slow him down. I hit him right in the face with a VHS tape and it brought him down like a sack of bricks. This wasn't abnormal so my mom just accepted it until one of us started crying.

My mom calmed us down by saying we can open presents! Of course my brother and I could forget our brother issues and enjoy some presents. So my brother wiped his tears off his face and I was still very careful around him because he could get me back at anytime.

We weren't sure what we would get because we knew money was tight. My mom said now before I give you this, I want to let you know I love you and I may not get to see you when you can actually do this legally. So now we were really excited!

She brings out some alcoholic mud slide mix and cigars. Our eyes lit up as we saw the treats. She said now this is a one time thing, you can't do it in front of me after this night. My brother and I looked at each other and smiled and said OF COURSE MOM!

So there we were sitting in a circle, the 3 of us, drinking and smoking together. Forgetting all the troubles in the world. We didn't care there weren't many presents we enjoyed the ones we had and we enjoyed each others company.

Little did my mom know my brother and I were already smoking and drinking. I actually had a small business of selling porn and cigars to my friends but we won't get into that.

A little later we heard a knock on the door and then someone walks in. It was my grandma. My brother and I look at eachother with big cigars in our mouths and froze. My grandma see's us and my mom and just walks right back out the door. We all started laughing again and continued chatting.

The background history of my grandma is she a very lucky lady and has always chosen the right path. She hasn't had to work a day in her life, shes 74 now and people who see her think she is 60 at most. My mom and her are on good terms now but back then she hated her because she had all this money and we could barley get by and she didn't seem to care.

But all in all it was a very fun time and a very memorable moment so I wanted to add that to the disfunctional holiday thread.


Also I'd like to add my mom is doing great, still on dialysis but has never been happier.

[skippy13]

No good story like yours Cory, but my stepfather would pick fights with all of us just before Christmas just so he didn't have to buy us any presents.

[christopher]

The bad: when I was 13, my uncle thought it would be HILARIOUS to feed me egg-nog until I got drunk. Unfortunately I ate a bad Christmas cookie and ended up worshipping the porcelain altar Christmas day.

The good: When I was 19 I cooked my first turkey for 25 people living in Lake Louise at the time.

[NorthQuad]

When I was like eight years old, my dad took my sister and I out for Christmas dinner. (at a steak and pizza place but w/e) My parents were separated, so it was like Christmas with him. It was going all good and he gave both of us one hundred dollars each to buy our own gifts. We weren't expecting to get anything from him, so we were so happy we almost cried.

Well, dinner was over and he drove us home. We gave kisses and hugs and our thank you to him for everything that night. And as we were getting out of his truck he said to us in a lowered tone stern voice, "Now you two make sure you tell your mom to tell Child Maintenance Enforcement that I gave you this money." The look on his face finished the rest of the sentence, which was, "Or I'm going to be very angry with you."

Yep, the money he gave us wasn't present money, it was child support. Well, for the duration of the night he spent with us it was present money, *wink..wink*. But once our Christmas night was over, and he didn't have to look at our faces, he didn't have to pretend he loved us anymore. We were just a little crushed.

[jody]

great stories.

[lynnifer]

OMG people! lol ... but it's not funny!

I had great Christmas memories growing up ... David was the only cause of any 'dysfunctional' ones .. and yes the the tree going over during an alcohol-fueled argument. One year I couldn't decide on which cologne to get him so I bought two because I liked them both ... and he promptly smashed them both on my old apartment's balcony making it smell like Christian Dior Higher Energy and Pierre Cardin for months ...

He was always a killjoy. I'd cook him something 'Englishish' (lol) and he wouldn't appreciate it or comment or anything. (Who the hell eats Yorkshire pudding and why are they called pudding when it's just bread for gawd sakes!?!?!) I'd go to a lot of trouble getting him something (he never went without) and he wouldn't open it on Christmas Day ... he'd put it off until I shoved it into his hands and insisted ... jeezus.

Then he had the audacity months later to ask about the one cologne again because he liked the way it smelled ... I also was responsible for his entire wardrobe right down to socks, underwear and outerwear!

He never went without .. even the year we were apart. When we were first together, we exchanged all the 'couple' things and I had jewelry, clothes, flowers, plants, dinners, etc ... for the last five or six years I never received a thing for Christmas or my birthday.

From that I learned to buy my own freaking gifts each year because no one else will! I should start wrapping them ... kidding.

[quad79]

Aww Jen, that it awful to read! Damn jerk!

Dave, yours way terrible too.

And Corey, well I hope that was really made up. I'm refusing to fall for that one until you say otherwise!

I avoid any family function with my dad because he now points out the extra weight sci has given me to everyone. Thanks dad, I bet they never noticed it until you commented.

[lynnifer]

Ha! Just the tip of the iceberg ... some of us are suckers for punishment.

[mr_coffee]

And Corey, well I hope that was really made up. I'm refusing to fall for that one until you say otherwise!

LOL, no its real, I just brought it up to my mom lastnight hah

Sad stories! Get some happy ones in here to counter the sad

[NoDecafPlz]

Happiness found in the darkest years radiates for a lifetime.

[rdf]

Happiness found in the darkest years radiates for a lifetime.

[november]

Well there was that Christmas that I broke my neck.

[NorthQuad]

Well there was that Christmas that I broke my neck.

OMG! That IS funny! Just kidding, that's awful.

But yeah, without my dad around, we always made Christmas fun. It was better without him. Because we would always go over to family friends houses, like my aunty Freda's (not actually aunt, just called her that) house where there would be an overload of kids, adults and pets. Where presents didn't matter because we were all poor. We would just compensate the lack of new toys with cardboard boxes that we would turn into sleds. Then, we'd all jump in the back of a truck and go out to 'the old ski hill' that had been closed down as an actual ski hill before I'd even been born and we'd use it for the ultimate sleding hill. As everyone from town did.

When we were all exhausted, bruised and soaked from sledding, we'd all head back to the house to devour the turkey and potatoes, always hoping there was enough gravy made for everyone. The kids were always dished out first by the adults, so that the kids wouldn't stick their pee-pee hands in the food that everyone else had to eat. Us kids would be eyeing up the dark meat while being dished out but always ended up with the dry white stuff. We didn't really care though.

We'd never sit around the table. We'd just find a spot on the carpeted floor in the living room in front of the t.v. where there was usually a Christmas movie on. The adults in the kitchen would crack dumb jokes like, "Hmmm... must be good, it's become really quite in there." Then the rest of the adults would fake laugh. While all of us kids would look up at each other as if to say, "Pffft... how corny." Then we'd mimic the adults and have a laugh of our own.

When we were all done eating we'd hand over our empty plates and pretend that we were so full our bellies hurt, so that we wouldn't be asked to do the dishes. We'd think we were sneaky but then one of the adults would mention pie and ice cream and we'd all of the sudden be hungry again. Of course, the adults would laugh and let us get away with it.

By the time all of us would be done eating, our winter clothes and boots would've dried enough to be able to put them back on and go out and play again. So we would make the most of the day together and fill the street with hockey nets made of large snowchunks acting as the goal posts and use hockey sticks that were either too big, small or broken. We'd play until it was time to go back to our own homes. It made for a great Christmas.

After days like that, the rest would just seem boring. I couldn't emagine it any other way.

[mr_coffee]

That a boy, what a wonderful Christmas treat!

[anban]

My dad died Christmas Eve 2001. He was at my grandmas house, and went to take a nap after eating lunch. My grandmother went in to wake him, and found him rolled off the bed and what we think was a heart attack.
It was the strangest thing, that evening, probably about 15 minutes after he died (although we were not aware that at the time) my husband said he felt a presence in the house. He thought it was his mother, who had died the previous year, but said it didn't feel right-like it wasn't her. We decided later must've been my father, passing through to say hello.