That’s right, folks – not just one, but two editions of The Humor Column this week … call it a little Christmas gift from me to you because, well, I don’t make nearly enough to buy you all new cars, but we can address that next year…

Nonetheless, I trust by now you’ve already torn into all of those presents that a certain extra-large, red-suited gentleman may have left under your tree last night as you dreamed of sugarplums and dirt bikes and giant dinosaurs made out of LEGOs.  With any luck your admirable behavior throughout the year has earned you all of your greatest wants and wishes from this year’s list, thus leaving you the remainder of the morning to spend assembling cities and waging wars on the living room carpet while all of the delectable smells of Christmas dinner begin to waft in from the kitchen.

In the meantime, though, as we all play with our new toys and eat snowman-shaped chocolates that are sure to ruin our dinner, I thought this might also be a good opportunity for me to tell a classic Christmas tale from my own childhood – one that taught me a very valuable lesson that I still hold true to this day.  It all happened on a day quite like this…

The year was 1995.

It was a cold and blustery winter in Northern Michigan, namely because there’s no such thing as a green Christmas when you live in Northern Michigan.  Instead, it starts snowing sometime just before Halloween and if you’re lucky, Mother Nature finally decides to give it a rest by the following Easter.  This year she had been particularly brutal, as noted by the mountainous snow drifts that Mom had to plow through in the minivan to drive me to school each morning.

Now I was merely a freshman in high school, meaning that while I was technically starting to grow up, I was still very much filled with all of the angst and stubbornness and blatant cynicism that ultimately made me a teenager.  Case in point – here we were in the middle of December with temperatures in the single digits and snow drifts higher than most cars, and yet nonetheless I insisted on wearing sandals to school.  Not exactly my finest hour, intellectually speaking…

But all in all there were probably about half a dozen of us in my class that did this – we were what you might refer to today as “idiots,” at least with regards to footwear preference despite adverse weather conditions, but you know how teenagers are – they’ll do anything to be different, even if that means getting frost bite.  And yet somehow throughout the course of that year-and-a-half phase, miraculously I didn’t lose any extremities to the icy cold, thanks in no doubt to my secret weapon – wool socks.

Well as it just so happened as this particular Christmas rapidly approached, I found myself to some extent indifferent with regards to what people got me for presents that year.  I mean, I was pretty busy at the time, what between starting to really notice girls while also simultaneously being absolutely petrified to talk to them, so needless to say my mind was thusly focused elsewhere and when family asked me what I’d like to find under the tree, so to speak, my typical response was simply the classic teenage “I dunno…” or “Whatever…” No actual insight whatsoever – frankly, it’s a wonder I managed to get anything at all that holiday season!

However it seems that through all of said teenage apathy, one unique suggestion did somehow slip through the cracks and despite what can only be assumed was a blatant display of sarcastic intent, said suggestion was followed to the degree that pretty much anyone who’s ever had to tolerate teenage smart-assery could dream of.  And by this point I’m sure you can probably already guess what happened next because low and behold, when it came time to open presents from my extended family, sure enough I opened a small and compactly-shaped package to find … yep, one of my relatives had actually given me socks for Christmas…

Of course, there was little argument to be made – I mean, technically “they were what I had asked for” and they did proceed to keep my feet moderately toasty throughout the remainder of my inclination to wear inappropriate footwear phase of growing up, but more importantly, friends, there was a lesson learned that afternoon as I sat there with my cousins, morosely holding my new socks as they excitedly tore open Nerf guns and remote-controlled helicopters and countless other awesome gifts that quite distinctly weren’t socks. That lesson was this – don’t be a smartass when someone asks you what you want for Christmas … they just might be a smartass, too.

And you’d better believe that the following year, yours truly was much more specific about his holiday desires … even if it meant just asking for gift cards and figuring it out later on my own time!  Returning to school from winter break was tough that year because, well, a gift like socks doesn’t exactly put you at the top of the bragging list, but you know what they say – what Christmas gifts don’t kill you only make you stronger.

Of course, there was also that year when one of my uncles “accidentally” swapped my present for a box full of bricks – another traumatic situation, as you can probably imagine, but we’ll save that one for another day!  As for today, though – I hope that everyone who makes The Humor Column a regular part of their weekly reading has a wonderful Christmas, and for those of you who still have gift exchanges in the days to come, may they be filled with remote-controlled dinosaurs and laser guns and chemistry sets, and most of all nothing even closely resembling socks…