Care to hear a dumb, semi-Christmas related story from my youth? Of course you do!

See, what happened was there was this Christmas play. Thankfully, I wasn’t actually in the play this time, I only acted as an observer. The particularly exciting thing about this play is that it wasn’t sanctioned by any school, church or other organization. Far from it. Rather, it was put on by my cousin and one of our friends—a friend who is the most creative, fearless and batshit insane person I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. A number of years have gone by and I can now remember almost none of the details of the play. But I do remember this much.

The main characters were some kind of tough, hip, urban folk named Jameela and Sinatra. But you have to say them as “JAM…eela” and “SIN…atra.” And they were having some kind of Christmas something or other. I don’t know what. I do know it involved fabric softener. You see, one of the characters, in true Grinch-y fashion, had stolen the other’s only Christmas present: A bottle of Downy fabric softener. This scenario gave rise to an immortal quotation, still quoted in my house to this very day:

Before long, laundry baskets and bottles of Downy were flying through the air like spring-fresh-scented meteors. I don’t have any idea what the point of all this was, unless it was all an elaborate excuse to throw things at people and call it theater. It’s possible that the whole play was some kind of statement on race relations, because I have some sort of recollection of a fight between the characters being prompted by some kind of racial slur. But I think the “excuse to throw things” explanation is a lot more likely.

In conclusion: I and my associates have always been really stupid, even around the holidays.

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