Holiday tales of woe...add your own

[Kitsa]

Gather round, boys and girls.

My family's luck always goes to shit in early November and stays that way through January. Some cosmic thing, I guess. Almost all of the family deaths, right down to the dogs, seem to have happened the first week of November. We always get our bad health diagnoses then too. Dunno. I hate winter.

Anyway.

One winter my mom had a car accident, totaled the car and broke her right forearm. She was in a cast and couldn't do much, so my dad went out and picked the Christmas tree. Except it was somehow lopsided, no matter how he sawed the trunk, and kept falling over. It fell over 2 or 3 times a day, and every time it did another one of mom's heirloom glass ornaments would be broken all to hell. To this day I don't know why he didn't just wire it to the wall.

Finally one night the damn thing fell over one last time and he picked it up under his arm, threw open the back door and threw it off our deck, lights, stand, ornaments and all. My mom was crying and my brother and I had to go out into the woods in the dark with flashlights and pick all the ornaments and stuff off the tree. Good times.

______

One Christmas when I was about 12, I was in the hospital for spinal surgery. They'd just put a halo brace on me (that's the one that's bolted to your skull) and I was still woozy from the anesthetic. All of a sudden, in comes this woman with a camera crew behind her, skipping right into my room.

I looked at her and looked at the camera. I was apparently supposed to be excited to see her but I didn't give a shit, so she autographed a picture for me and left. Evidently she was the host of some local afternoon kids' show. I don't know if I was embarrassing her on live TV or not, but seriously, lady, don't just go skipping into random rooms expecting us to wet our pants over you. Children's Hospitals are bad about that- lots of celebrities showing up for photo ops around the holidays.

Later I tried to entertain a kid who was scared of my brace by hanging a stuffed animal off of it. Then the stuffed animal wouldn't come off and the kid went into hysterics.


About a week after that, I slipped on ice and knocked all the bolts funny and they had to be screwed into my skull all over again.

[glowbelly]

my mother's right side of her body went numb on christmas eve, 1993! she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer 3 days later!

WOE WOE WOE!

[Kitsa]

Yes, our cancer shit always happens around Christmas too.

[Sam]

When that old lady's poop bag exploded in your house did that happen in winter?

[Kitsa]

No, that was a garage sale in July.

[Tadao]

On a hot day

[Kitsa]

Yep.

I don't think I have a holiday poop story. I wrote a poem about someone crapping in a home depot demo toilet at Christmas but now I don't remember it.

[ZeldaQueen]

Aw that sucks.

I have a post-Christmas story. Last year, a few days after Christmas, our tree inexplicably fell over in the middle of the night. It's not like it was unstable or anything. It was standing upright perfectly fine for the week or so (or however long we had it) prior to Christmas. My mom heard the crash in the middle of the night and asked my dad "What was that noise?" My dad, a heavy sleeper, replied "What noise?" In the morning, my mom found out. And the thing didn't just fall over. The base, just above where it was screwed into the stand, broke like it was knocked over in a storm. My mom joked that some animal like a bear snuck into our house at night and tried to climb the tree, knocking it over.

[Sam]

When I worked at Home Depot that actually happened a couple times.

It wasn't Christmas-time though.

[Colonel Flagg]

Tonight my wife hit a deer on her way home from work. 60+ mph and never saw it coming. I'll be talking to insurance adjusters tomorrow. Joy, joy, joy.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

[MetalMilitia]

That's christmas dinner sorted then!

[There's A Bat]

One year my grandmother came to stay with us for the holidays. She's one of those religious psychos who gives all her money to the church and leaves no money to even buy herself some food with. She's also been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that's another story. Anywho, She somehow came into contact with some sort of stomach virus that causes the infected to vomit and defecate at the same time, and brought it to our home. It was an early christmas gift! Naturally, she shat all over the pull-out couch bed AND my parents bed. My poor mom had to clean it all up. The virus spread from person to person until the entire household, about 7 people that year, spent the entirety of christmas and christmas eve shitting and puking violently. On the plus side, I got an SNES that year!

[ZeldaQueen]

Originally Posted by There's A Bat

One year my grandmother came to stay with us for the holidays. She's one of those religious psychos who gives all her money to the church and leaves no money to even buy herself some food with. She's also been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that's another story. Anywho, She somehow came into contact with some sort of stomach virus that causes the infected to vomit and defecate at the same time, and brought it to our home. It was an early christmas gift! Naturally, she shat all over the pull-out couch bed AND my parents bed. My poor mom had to clean it all up. The virus spread from person to person until the entire household, about 7 people that year, spent the entirety of christmas and christmas eve shitting and puking violently. On the plus side, I got an SNES that year!

Mery christmas.

Reminds me of when my entire family was bedridden with the flu throughout Valentine's Day. I was in second grade and someone sent all of my class Valentines to me. My Grandmother came over to help us out.

[Colonel Flagg]

Originally Posted by There's A Bat

One year my grandmother came to stay with us for the holidays. She's one of those religious psychos who gives all her money to the church and leaves no money to even buy herself some food with.

I never realized my brother had any children!

[Aaarg]

Last Christmas was kind of bittersweet. We were lucky to have had my mother alive for one more Christmas (which is longer than what they had originally suggested), but we all knew that there wasn't much time left. She made it until the 19th of January.

On Tuesday night, my ex-girlfriend's brother was killed in a car accident. Another brother was driving the car, he swerved to miss a deer, and hit a tree. The younger brother was ejected from the car and died at the scene.

[Kitsa]

I'm glad she made it through Christmas.

My mom's on cancer #5 or 6, I don't remember. The first one was diagnosed right before Christmas, and she had a lymphangiogram to stage it. She ended up being allergic to the dye they used and got this sudden pneumonia. We got her to the hospital and the only attending there was a really bitter man who kept telling us that he was the only one who would work Christmas because he was Jewish. He decided my mom had Legionnaire's disease and we spent Christmas eve with him telling us mom was going to die in a few hours and to say our goodbyes.

Luckily, right after that they found out she didn't have Legionnaire's at all, and they gave her IV stuff for the allergic reaction. But I'll never forget how casual that guy flipped it out "Your mom's gonna die tonight, so you'd better say your goodbyes."

...idiot.

Also, the very first time I felt the pain/paralysis of my spinal cord cancer/brain tumor was when I was a toddler helping my mom decorate the tree at my grandmother's house. I have this crystal-clear memory of turning to her and saying "Mommy, my neck hurts". I even remember what I was wearing. As a matter of fact, I think I actually have a picture of that exact moment. I'll have to go look for it.

Christmas just isn't merry for everybody.

[Dixie]

Holidays are for religious people

[10,000 Volt Ghost]

Originally Posted by Colonel Flagg

Tonight my wife hit a deer on her way home from work. 60+ mph and never saw it coming. I'll be talking to insurance adjusters tomorrow. Joy, joy, joy.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

I've been taking deer hit claims all day. Hope she is okay.

[Kitsa]

I was just thinking the other day about how many deer must be out there for deer hits to be so prevalent.

[10,000 Volt Ghost]

To be fair sometimes you can get at least 2-3 hits out of the same deer.

[Tadao]

If you use slow burning papers.

[Mockery]

Plane tickets are too pricey, so I gots nowhere to go this Christmas.

Priceline Negotiator my ass

[Colonel Flagg]

Originally Posted by 10,000 Volt Ghost

I've been taking deer hit claims all day. Hope she is okay.

Yeah, scared out of her wits, but none the worse, thankfully. A couple of hundredths either way and she would have been in the emergency room, but as it stood, the deer only clipped the right side.

Fuck of a bad time to purchase a new car, though. I'm hoping it's not totaled.

[Colonel Flagg]

Originally Posted by Kitsa

I was just thinking the other day about how many deer must be out there for deer hits to be so prevalent.

There's a load around here - I've personally clipped 3 deer in 12 years, with several near misses.

I have the lowest possible deductible on my comprehensive.

[Kitsa]

I remember my dad trained me and my brother to watch for eyeflashes and yell out if we saw a deer near the road. We were really little.

I always wondered what would happen if I yelled out and there was no deer- glad I never did.