A Christmas Casey

Ralphie, meet Casey

My family has long marveled at how much my nephew Casey looks like poor little Ralphie from A Christmas Story. Yes, it's on TBS for the next 24 hours, and yes, I'm watching it while flitting around, getting last-minute wrapping and travel preparations done.

Tonight marks the first Christmas Eve I've ever spent away from my parents' home. It's not so bad, I guess, though I'm positive it will be impossible to wake up as early tomorrow as I would have had I been staying at my parents'. Sheer habit left over from my childhood forces both me and my brother up at about 6 each Christmas morning, even if we don't go to bed until well after midnight.

As I was driving home from work tonight, I remembered one year when we lived at the Hooker's Bend house (yes, laugh if you must) that someone dressed as Santa came and did the whole song and dance for my brother and me. We were really young. It was the same year we got big green tree-shaped lollipops coated in white, which we would stick to our tongues to make white tree-shaped imprints. I never figured out or asked, later in life, who dressed up as Santa that year for us. Maybe I'll ask my mom if she remembers.