Dawn of the Twelve Blogs of Christmas: It's the Thought That Counts

Can you believe it’s December 1? I mean, sure, the calendar says so, but seriously? I can’t even with December. It’s fifteen days until Hanukah. It’s twenty four days until Christmas. And it’s forty-six days until my daughter’s bat mitzvah. You would think just those three things should be enough to make my head spin. But on top of all of that stuff, all that planning and shopping and cooking and trying to please and unrealistic expectations and inevitable disappoint and all the other emotions, I give myself another big task every December. Yes, people, it’s time for The Twelve Blogs of Christmas. None of these posts will be rehashed, edited, or photo shopped into something new. Twelve original posts, stories, anecdotes, vignettes, lists, or whatever I can muster up from my overtaxed mind. I can’t promise length, excellence, poignancy, or hilarity, but I can promise twelve.

So here we go.

On Saturday night, a friend came over with her two kids. She was going squirrely over the Thanksgiving in her own home after banning one more hour of video games and realizing that meant they would turn to her or against each other for entertainment. We decided on take out Italian and board games, which is really brilliant combination that I highly recommend after a couple of days of Thanksgiving food and football. Luckily we had a game they had never played before, and after we figured out a rhythm, everyone seemed to loosen up and relax.

My friend came to my house after dragging her kids around the mall, in an effort to get out and away from screen time. Her children are a delight, and even after a few too many days of together time, they still were pleasant and polite and engaging, which cannot be said of many eleven and thirteen year olds. Her thirteen year old son, who actually talks to adults other than his parents, made the mistake of mentioning that even after a trip to the mall, he had not gotten a gift for his girlfriend and had no ideas of what to get her.

The whole concept fascinated me, so I had to ask lots of follow up questions. It went down like this:

Me: Wait, you have a girlfriend? You are, what, thirteen now, right?

Boy: Yes.

Me: Can I ask you a personal question?

This is the part where I really shouldn’t ask a personal question. I should just keep my thoughts to myself, inside my head, instead of letting them out there to haunt and disturb others. It’s that filter thing that I lack.

Boy: Um, sure. I guess.

Me: What do you do with your girlfriend?

Boy: (silence)

Me: I don’t mean do, but, like, you don’t exactly go on dates, obviously. I mean, you’re thirteen. It’s not like you are picking her up and taking her to dinner and a movie and then back to her place. So what do you do? Do you talk on the phone? Do you walk her to class? Text? Snapchat? What constitutes a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship in middle school? I am genuinely curious.

My friend sat quietly. Either she didn’t know how to stop my interrogation of her son, or she really wanted to know as well.

Boy: I don’t know. We don’t really do much. I don’t have any classes with her, so I don’t walk with her. Sometimes I see her at the end of the day, in the car pool line.

Boy’s sister: Twice a week! He can talk to her twice a week.

Boy: The rest of the time she is really busy, and then she has to do family stuff on the weekends. So we don’t really talk all that much.

Me: Do you live in the same neighborhood?

Boy: No.

Me: Okay, this is fascinating. So you have this girlfriend, whom you only really see or talk to for a few minutes twice a week. And you don’t live near each other, and you don’t have any classes together. How exactly did you hook up with her?

I hoped that hook up meant something different in eighth grade.

Boy: Well, basically a girl who is friends with my girlfriend came up to me and asked me if I liked the girl who is my girlfriend, and I said sure I guess, and so now she is my girlfriend.

I am pretty sure that is how all relationships begin.

Me: So what’s the problem?

Boy: Well, I don’t know what to get her.

Me: What’s wrong with a piece of crappy jewelry and a stuffed animal? Isn’t that the standard? That was the standard back in the day. Every kiss begins with K.

Boy: Huh?

His mother chimed in: What about a box of chocolates?

Me: Ooh yeah, Whitman’s Sampler from the CVS!!

We both started to laugh. The kids just looked at us.

Me: No, wait, I got it…get her a Lifesavers book!

Boy: What’s that?

Me: It’s a fake box that looks like a book, and it’s filled with rolls of Lifesavers, but only the nasty flavors.

Boy: Can we just go back to the game now?

I don’t know what he is going to get this girlfriend of his, but chances are, she will be disappointed anyway. And then in a week, they might break up because they don’t spend enough time together. Just like every other relationship.

I was impressed by him, though. He indulged me throughout the whole conversation, and didn’t even seem embarrassed or perturbed that I was clearly making fun of the whole girlfriend situation, albeit not in a malicious way. It’s what I do. I enjoy the humor of the situation. And that thirteen year old boy handled it like a pro.

She’s a lucky girl.