Annual Christmas letter - photobucket

Let me say this about that.

I really enjoy reading, and since my retirement, I now have the time to do a lot of it.  My favorite reading material is nonfiction because real life is far more absurd and funny than anything a best selling author can make up.  However, I do get a chance to read a little fiction at least once a year, when I start getting the “Annual Christmas Letters” from all my friends.

For those of you not familiar with the “Annual Christmas Letter”, let me explain.  This letter documents the previous year’s accomplishments and experiences of a particular family, with heavy emphasis on the achievements of children and grandchildren.  The letter is also usually accompanied by a dozen, or so, photographs featuring slobbering babies, pre-adolescent delinquents in Santa hats, and a portrait of the whole ‘fam damily’ posing around Grandmummy and Grandpoppy’s Christmas tree.  Allow me to share one such letter I received in yesterdays mail.

“Well, it’s been quite a year for the Snerd family.  Our daughter Patsy added to our glorious family when she delivered twin baby girls last February.  Patsy and her husband Earl immediately enrolled them into a Montessori School.  Their graduation was held in October.

Roscoe, our oldest son, was given an award for heroism after he saved the life of a passenger on his flight to Buffalo.  The passenger was suffering from…    extreme agony over his failure to pass a giant kidney stone.  Roscoe, jumped up, snatched a soda straw from the flight attendant’s cart and removed the kidney stone with a hefty sucking maneuver he learned from his first wife.

Leroy (or Snookums, as we call him) our second grand-baby is finally out of diapers and will be entering Harvard Law School next term.  We took him with us to the local Denny’s a few weeks ago.  The waitress put him in a high chair and gave him a coloring book and some crayons.  The coloring book will be displayed in the Louvre next January.

Bubba, our youngest son, was granted an early release from prison after he dazzled the Parole Board with his essay entitled “Why I Didn’t Do It, But Coulda’ If I Had Wanted To.”  You recall from last year’s Christmas Letter that Bubba graduated at the head of his class at Leavenworth’s vocational school program in ‘Refrigerator Magnet Making’, but me and Grandpoppy are still holding out hopes that he will accept NASA’s offer to enter astronaut training in the Spring.

Grandpoppy is doing much better after he chopped off his foot with a hatchet while cutting firewood.  He was in some pain for a while, but finally just rubbed some dirt on it and it was fine.  Unfortunately Humper, the family dog, took Grandpoppy’s foot and buried it somewhere in the back yard.  The grand-kids are having such fun trying to earn the $1 reward we offered to which ever one finds it.  Regrettably, the back yard now looks like an Iraqi mine-field but Humper doesn’t look too concerned.

The whole Snerd family continues to bask in the glow of our wonderfulness and we offer our blessings on your poor wretched and pathetic life.  We fully understand that your gene-pool does not allow for accomplishment above the mediocre, but you still have cause for joy.  At least you have us to look up to.

Merry Christmas from Grandmummy Snerd.”

And, that’s all I have to say about that.

Shambo