Christmas in Venice and the Viking Warrior Gene

Christmas 1970  We were normal once, but that was a long time ago.

At one time we were cute and cuddly and snugly - had manners and said our prayers.

 (I'm the cute one on the rocking horse)

(Erick and Mary)  (Here I am crawling on the floor) 

(Kurt and Karl)

We took pictures without pinching the person in front of us or elbowing the person next to us. We ate meals together at the kitchen table and called our mother and father "mom" and "dad" like most other children in the world. 

Being number 7 most of those days are before my time and are but a shadowy memory at best.

 

(Here is what a couple pictures look like without having prison guards or parents on patrol)

Now that I am 14 and in high-school at Saint Monicas - mom has pretty much checked out and dad stays at work as much as possible--so it is like having the inmates running the asylum.

In the future they will discover something called the warrior gene. This, I'm sure, has been handed down to my family from our Viking ancestry. This genetic disposition is not on my mom's side of the family. There was still some "normal" in her that caused her to long for our family to be like other all the other plain wrap families in the world--but this was not to be.

Everything in our house was a competition. A simple game of croquet turned into World War II with croquet balls launched all the way down Harding Avenue into the Nargie's front yard and the round-missile-objects shot all the way down to the vacant lot where the Fraternity house use to be.

Croquet for the Lennons and Tripps and Blasers was probably just croquet. For us, it would invariability turn into a wrestling match--everything turned into a wrestling match, a boxing match, and a footrace if a chuckwalla, a Iguana or alligator ever got loose.

This is why our house was the center of the world. The Lennons wanted into the fun - the Blasers wanted to hang out here along with the the Tripps - the Grants and is why our house always seemed to be filled with a million people on every occasion.

Why sit around and watch Kung fu or Dick Van Dyke on TV when everyday was an episode of Sanford and Son meets the Adams Family and Dark Shadows--only our haunted house also had a Veloci-Raptor attack-rooster and a crop of luscious marijuana plants in the backyard just to make things more interesting.

(What it looked like then on our front steps)

(What the front steps looks like now with the Police showing up every other day)

Now that I was a Freshman in high school the older boys tried to recruit me into the hippy club and taught me how to smoke and roll a refer. I desperately wanted to be in the club - I wanted to be accepted - I wanted to feel like I was part of the menagerie of older brothers, but didn't want to jump in with both feet quite yet. I wanted to please the older guys and had to show some loyalty to the Wolf Pack by puffing from time to time, but wasn't ready to fully buy in to this whole hippy thing completely.

Making matters worse at Christmas Tony had given up on shopping at Pick and Save altogether. He figured that it was cheaper, more fun and added more to the overall the chaos by rummaging through the attic for junk he could wrap as presents. Then his gift giving digressed from the smelly old-broken stuff to stuff he would steal from someone's bedroom.

One of the highlights of this new Christmas tradition was when any one of of the older boys unwrapped a present allegedly from "Santa" that belonged to someone else all H. E. double toothpicks would break out. This awakens the Force of the Warrior Creed.

Wrestling would break out and bodies would spill out and onto the front lawn.

Dad seemed to enjoy it and acted just like the rest of us but none of this please my mother!

After three or four rounds of utter chaos Mrs. D would stomp her feet on every single tread of the staircase--all the way up to her room while saying things like, "Why couldn't we be more like the Lennons and the Blasers. Slamming her door she would lock her self in imagining what Christmas was probably like next door or down the street at the Lennons.



(Mom...Mrs. D Pictured this to the left...




but got something that looked more like this...to the right)

I could only image that this year after midnight mass upon entering the front door we would get the "Under-Pain-of-Mortal-Sin" speech again just before opening large sliding into the living room just seconds before we jumped onto the mountain of poorly wrapped presents under Mr. D's two dollar tree he finagled from the Troop 32, Boy Scout, Christmas tree lot.

We had a lot to look forward to. Zombies and Wrapping Paper Wars. The stolen presents, the wrestling matches, chaos and mayhem and you can be sure that those normal people would stop by - because they wanted in on the fun also. 

Joy to the World. Merry Christmas from me - Markie D - and from my family to you and yours... may your Christmas be less than normal, but Sacred none-the-less.