Chrithmath Memory

After posting the Spookshow In Your Pants holiday album, I still like the idea of having Christmas in May. So I think
I'll share one of my favorite (and by that I mean completely mortifying) Christmas memories.

This happened probably a decade or so ago. I'd realized that mall shopping made me absolutely batshit and decided to do
that year's holiday obligation by trolling up and down High Street, near where I live. Unique, weirdo gift shops were far easier to deal with than chain stores that had "JUST HEAR THOSE SLEIGH BELLS JINGLING, JING JING JINGLING, OOOH"
blaring over loudspeakers to the point I wanted to shove a potato peeler through my eardrums to make it stop.

It ended up being a nice night. It was cold, but not horribly freezing, and the fat snowflakes drifting down were pretty to look at. I found some stuff I thought was cool to give as gifts. Would my family appreciate them? Whatever. I don't know them and they don't know me. But once a year we fake like we're on the same page and pretend that commercialism brings us closer. But this particular year I kinda felt like, maybe, I'd gotten it, if not right, at least close.

I had bags full of stuff. I settled in at the bus stop waiting for the ride to take me home.

Some kid was there, probably eighteen or nineteen and was obviously gay as the Easter Parade. I love gay kids, given that they get to be what I was but never could express without being killed, most likely by a family member.

"Merry Chrithmas!" he shouted.

"Merry Christmas to you, too," I said. We started talking. The moonlight flashing on the new-fallen snow was nothing compared to the way it glinted off the silver stud through his tongue.

"Have you been doing thome thopping?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, doing my best to not make it sound like yeth.

"Chrithmath is awethome!" he said. I could not disagree more, but sometimes cuteness gets to win.

I am still a bastard at heart, though, and no matter how endearing his Drew Barrymore in E.T schtick happened to be, I was determined to call him on his affectations and resulting peculiar speech.

"New tongue piercing?" I asked.

"No, I've had this for two years. But I've always had a lithp."

AWKWARD!