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The Story of Blair Sandburgs Worst Christmas
By Dar Hutson Scally
Christmas Night 1999 The Loft
"This must be the worst Christmas you've ever had." Joel said, looking at Blair's freshly casted arm.
Blair smiled. "No, actually I'd have to say this is one of my better Christmas days."
Simon, Joel, Brown, Rafe, and Jim all looked puzzled at that statement. Jim smiled at the smirk on his partners face. "That doesn't say much for your past Christmas'." Blair laughed. "No, but it says a lot about my current
ones." Looking around, he realized he would have to spell it out for them. "Just look around." He explained. "Here I sit, among the best friends I've ever had. I have good health." He noticed they all looked at his broken arm. "Well, except for minor fractures and a few bruises."
Simon thought back to early in the day when Jim had called him, fear in his voice, apologizing for interrupting his Christmas day, but asking for a ride to the hospital. Simon knew he didn't just need a ride. He could have taken Blair's car if he really just needed a ride. Simon knew his friend well enough to know that needing a ride in this case was "JimSpeak" for needing a friend. Blair had been out in Jim's truck, coming back from delivering a present to a friend. Actually, he hadn't even gotten back into the truck, but was only crossing the street, when a car had come around the corner and banged into him. Blair's friend, who had seen it happen from her window, had said it didn't really hit him that hard, just enough to knock him over. The driver had stopped, an elderly woman, crying hysterically. She had never had an accident before in over 45 years of driving. But this time, she had her cat with her in the car and Sophie had decided, at the very moment she had turned the corner, to jump onto the dashboard and startle her. Blair was okay. In fact, he had insisted on talking to Jim on the cell phone to let him know he was all right. Of course, hearing Blair's pained breathless voice hadn't really helped all that much.
End result; Here they sat, at the end of a day, most of which had been spent in a hospital emergency room,
finally relaxing among friends, trying to enjoy the little bit of their Christmas holiday that remained.
Blair looked from face to face, then settled on Jims. "Youre not getting it. I may have spent most of the
day in pain in an ER, but in my life I am right where I want to be. I have a great place to live, the best friends
anyone could ask for, and basically a good life. And even if I get hurt once in awhile, I am never alone to deal with
it. Knowing I have someone," He looked away from Jim at the rest of the group. "Several someones, that will always
be around to see me through, makes me feel really special. So, that's why I can't feel like this has been a bad
Christmas. I have the best gift. I have friends who are like family. Besides, you don't really want to hear about
my worst Christmas. A little accident and a broken arm are nothing." He laughed, remembering that really terrible year
when he was twelve years old.
"Oh no, we can't let that statement go by." Brown said, smiling.
"Yeah, Sandburg, tell us about the worst Christmas you've ever had." Rafe chimed in.
Blair started to get up from the chair, but Jims arm came over from the couch and blocked him.
"Unless you're going to the bathroom, you're not moving." Jim cautioned. You've had enough happen to you today. It's
time to rest now."
"I was just going to make some hot chocolate." Blair said.
"If I'm going to tell a story about my worst Christmas, I thought we could all use some cookies and hot chocolate
first."
"I'll get it." Jim said. "You, stay put."
Conversation continued while Jim made a pot of coffee and some hot chocolate and served cookies. Everyone
gathered around the coffee table, Rafe and Brown taking the floor. The fire in the fireplace crackled and cast orange
shadows over the room.
Blair dipped a Santa shaped cookie into his hot chocolate and bit the head off, then crunched the rest of
it and sipped his drink.
They waited patiently, watching him gear up to tell his story. They had all heard him tell stories before and
knew he usually told an interesting story. None of them knew how much of what he said was true and how much was
embellishment, but it didn't really matter. The kid was a good storyteller.
Blair looked at the tiny lights on the Christmas tree and thought back to that terrible Christmas from his past.
Actually, if he thought about it, he could tell stories about several really bad Holidays he had endured. But they
wanted to hear about the worst year, so he would tell them the story.
"Well, I was twelve years old. It was Christmas of 1981. Naomi and I had celebrated Christmas almost every
year, although a couple of years we ended up in a totally Jewish environment, so we stuck with the traditional Jewish
holidays then. He looked around at his Christian friends, thinking it must be nice to have a set belief and stick
with it for a whole lifetime. I was kind of confused when I was a kid. Didn't know if I was supposed to be Jewish,
Christian, or one of the other religions Naomi observed at different times. She always said it didn't really matter
which one you went with, that we were all worshipping the same God. Except of course, that one year when we ended up living with what turned out to be a group of Satanists. But, that's another story."
"Anyway, the year I was twelve, we were living with some friends of Naomi's, who happened to be Christian, so
we were up to celebrating Christmas, which was fine with me. I kind of enjoyed the idea of Santa Claus coming,
bringing presents. I always liked the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer leading the sleigh and landing on the
roof with the other reindeer, waiting while Santa dropped off the loot."
He sat his now empty mug on the table and curled back in his chair, pulling the blanket around him.
"So, I had done some shopping and I knew Naomi had, and I figured her friends were probably giving me presents
too, so I had something for each of them. I was really charged up about the whole thing. I mean, the year before,
we had been alone at Christmas and money was really tight and well, to be honest, I remembered being a little on the
hungry side and not knowing if we'd have food that year, so Christmas was kind of a far off idea then. So, here I was,
remembering going to the shelter on Christmas Day the year before to get a free meal. We were living in a big house
with three other people and plenty of food and it was warm and everybody was friendly, but not too friendly. I mean,
it was perfect. I felt like I was living my dreams."
"Christmas morning came and we were all sitting around the living room. I was just getting ready to open my first
present. All of the adults were still in coffee mode so it was kind of quiet. I was standing in front of the tree,
picking out which present to open first, when suddenly the sliding glass doors shattered, glass flying everywhere.
And, of course, I was standing right next to it, so I was cut up all over the place, nothing major, just minor cuts,
but some of them had pieces of glass embedded in them. But none of us even had a moment to react to that, cause the
reason for the glass breaking was running loose through the house." Blair paused, looking around at his audience.
"It was a deer, a deer with horns, a deer acting very strange. I stood there, watching this deer running around
the house. It went into the kitchen. We could hear it knocking things over. The table leg broke and breakfast
went on the floor. Nobody moved. We were all just so stunned that we just stood there. Which turned out to be a
big mistake, at least for me. As soon as the deer ran back into the living room, I knew I
was in trouble. It was jumping around, butting its head into everything it came up against, and it was aimed right
for me. By that time, Uncle Fred had gotten up and grabbed a broom. I don't know what he expected to do with a broom, I guess maybe herd it back outside, but he started to come at it with the broom, just as the deer bumped into me, butting me in the stomach with its horns, knocking me into the tree, which fell.
Around the time I fell onto the tree, I guess my subconscious decided that was enough, cause I passed out, I
think more from shock than anything else. I wasn't really hurt that bad. The horns just got me in the side, more of a scrape than a cut."
"Anyway, from what they told me later when I woke up in the emergency room, Uncle Fred managed to shoo it
outside with his broom and the Wildlife Bureau was in pursuit. See, they wanted to catch up with it to check it
out for rabies, cause of the way it was acting. Even though I wasn't bitten, the doctors still felt like they should
give me the rabies series just to make sure, cause of the horns jabbing me."
"My mom and her friends all stayed at the hospital with me until they were ready to let me go home. By that time it
was late Christmas night. They wanted to keep me overnight,but I wanted to go home and open my presents and I wasn't really hurt that bad. So, they decided it would be okay if I went home."
"So, we all got into Fred's car and started home. A few blocks from the house, we started smelling smoke, and we
had to pull over for a fire engine and a couple of police cars to pass us. Next thing you know, we're at the end of
the street and the police have it blocked off cause there's a fire a block down."
"We pull over and get out. It took me a few minutes to realize it was our house. Or actually, I guess I should
says Fred's house. We all started walking down until we were standing there, as close as they would let us get,
watching the house burn down. I mean, it was almost fully engulfed. The fire engine that had passed by us was the
third alarm. So, not only am I all cut up and in pain, facing a probability of rabies shots in the near future, but also
have no Christmas presents, no belongings of any kind and no place to live. Plus my pet snake was in the house somewhere, probably already a crispy critter. I was devastated."
"Whoa, Blair, you weren't kidding. That was the worst Christmas I've ever heard of." Rafe said.
"What happened after that?" Joel asked.
"Well, the Red Cross came in and found us a place to stay and even got me a couple of Christmas presents." Blair
said.
"Did you have to get the rabies shots?" Brown asked.
Blair nodded. "They never did catch up with the deer, but apparently during his romp through the kitchen, he clawed
the electric cord to the toaster oven. That's what started the fire. If everyone hadn't gone to the hospital with me,
somebody would have been there to catch the fire before it got too far along. I always felt kind of responsible for
it, even though I know it wasn't my fault. I just thought then that if I was a little more grown up, they wouldn't
all have felt like they needed to go with me to the hospital."
"You don't know what would have happened, Chief. " Jim
said. "What if one person had stayed home and fallen asleep on the couch. They could have been hurt or killed in the
fire."
Blair smiled suddenly. "Hey, Jim, You're right. I never even thought of that possibilty. Even after all this time,
that makes me feel better." "See, I told you this was a great Christmas." Blair said.
It was quiet for a moment as they all thought back to previous years holidays, all of them realizing that what
Blair had said was true. How could Christmas be any better than it was when you had those you loved close by, whether they be family or friends or friends who felt like family. And each of them knew they were, at that moment, among the best friends anyone could have.
The End