A brief summary for those who missed last week's column:

I went to Spokane to visit my family for Christmas break. That's right, the same city that 4 years ago I executed my daring balloon escape from. After briefly describing the members of my family, I shared a story that my nine-year-old nephew wrote. It was a Scrooge story that featured Cindy Crawford.

My nephew is a pop-culture magnet.

But now, back to this week's column and some highlights of my break.

Martian Death Flu

The grueling four-hour drive behind me, I concentrated on enjoying my break to the fullest extent as allowed by law.

This was a fine plan except for the fact that I caught the Martian Death Flu promptly upon arrival--largely because my immune system refused to enter Spokane with me.

Actually, I didn't catch the full blown Maritan Death Flu. No praying to strange gods over porcelain at midnight for me--thank God. But there was a Martian Death Flu going around. Some high-school kid in Coeur D'Alene (French for "No nazis please--we're a resort town") caught it and died.

So, here I am, the day after I get to Spokane, feeling like day-old bread, fever in the low 200s and the people on the news insist on telling me all the symptoms for something that could likely kill me. Luckily I possessed them all already or I would have had to imagine them. And all along I'm thinking, I always knew I would be sucked back to Spokane to die a lame death.

The interesting thing to think about at this point is how the media handle the flu season. Every year they tell us that this season's flu is the worst ever. "Accompanying the nauseau will be a large horn growing out of your forehead. If you have these symptoms, start funeral arrangements." You'd think it would hit a peak somewhere, or some season they'd say, "Hey, the flu's not so bad this year. Have fun not barfing!"

But I digress.

Obviously, I didn't catch the Martian Death Flu. But my own variety of sickness was particularly enjoyable for the large changes it made in my sleeping schedule. I was only able to sleep for about four hours at a time on any given day. Let me tell you, I was the life of the party. "I'd love to stay and catch up on old times, but I'm experiencing some temporary narcolepsy."

I actually tried to go to bed early. I'd be snuggled in bed, asleep, by 9:30. And then, at 1:30, I'd be up again, coughing up my pancreas and feeling generally grumpy. Which brings me to the next highlight of Christmas Break:

More Cable TV Than You Can Shake A Stick At

I watched potentially lethal amounts of cable tv this break. Really, when you're up at 2:30 A.M. there's not much else you can do.

My parents subscribe to all the pay channels in the known universe, so there was no lack of bad movies to chose from. My favorites were the ones where the plot is that three guys and/or three girls go to the beach. Who needs "Citizen Kane" when you can view these cinematic tour de forces? With dialogue straight out of their predecessors in the genre, any of these are easily a shoe-in for the Palm D'Or (French for "Pretentious Award") at the next year's Cannes.

You've got your own, personalized, Mystery Science Theater 3000 when you have bad cable movies and a horrible case of insomnia?

I think the particular highlight of Christmas cable viewing was watching aerobics shows on ESPN in the middle of the night. There's a weird sort of irony in sitting on the couch, pepsi in hand, kleenex attached to nose, while watching slim, healthy people doing aerobics. My favorite show was the one with the French (maybe he's just vaguely European) aerobics instructor. It's very bizarre watching a man who's thighs are easily twice as wide as your head. "Now Jill and Michael will do the leg presses while I flex my buttocks for you."

The strange thing about watching cable during the break--and I'm not sure if I should share this (let's just say there are people who would see you dead rather than admit this possibility)--I never once saw "It's a Wonderful Life." But let's just keep that to ourselves, ok?

All I Wanted For Christmas

My illness lessened two days before Christmas. Just enough time to hunt for parking at any one of Spokane's glorious malls. It was an insane sprint, and I went overdrawn about eight times, but I managed to find an appropriate gift for everyone in my family.

It was on Christmas Eve, when I opened my ribbon-clad packages, that I realized something important about gift-giving and receiving. If you give a family that hardly sees you a very small Christmas list, you will get everything on that list. I did.

I'm not sure why, but there's a weird irony in actually getting the things you ask for. It's very unsettling after so many adolescent years spent asking for ridiculously expensive toys out of the Sears catalog with not a hope in hell of getting them.

But it made me realize how severely college can warp you. You see, I never stopped to think that people who have families and working budgets might actually want to purchase their gifts at some time other than the week before Christmas (my personal method) possessed with a vague clue of what they were buying before packing the kids in the car to brave the mall. So, when I saw them at Thanksgiving and gave them a few vague ideas for gifts, they actually went out and bought those things. It was simple, uncomplicated, and they gave me things I wanted.

I never would have thought of it.

Nintendo Thumb

After Christmas I was feeling much better. My friend, Cal, had decided to make an important purchase with his Christmas money. He thought long and hard, weighed his options, calculated precisely, and then drove me to Toys R'Us (French for "Toys, silly foreigner") where he purchased a Sega Genesis.

Cal just got out of the Army. He was in military intelligence. I never asked what he did (because he would have had to kill me), but I sensed that military life was not a lot of fun for him.

That was why it was important for him to invest in his leisure time. And that investment was the purchase of the most violent video game known to mankind: Mortal Kombat.

It was all very disappointing. The game wasn't bloody at all. We expected heads to pop off and huge gushers of blood to come out of the necks. We wanted limbs to come flying off at inopportune moments, spreading gook and sinew all over the other player. We demanded that blood spray across the screen and into the living room. I mean, what was the point of buying the worlds most violent game if there was no blood? But all we got were men and women in tights delivering love taps to each other.

We played for several hours anyway. We learned the secret moves. I used the Ice-Man to kick his butt, he used the guy with the Fying Death Kick to pummel mine. We talked in silly voices that didn't quite sync with our lips. "Ouch, that hurt. You will not do that to me again, spawn of Satan." "You will regret that when I feed you your toes in fondue." We also bruised the hell out of our thumbs.

The next day, Cal called the customer service hotline to ask them if he had bought a PG version of the game by mistake. They said that there was a special code to make it more violent. They didn't have any thumb-bruise relief ideas however.

I never played the game again, but Cal assured me it wasn't really any bloodier with the special code. I guess there really is no pride in workmanship these days.

The New Year and Home Again

I spent New Year's Eve at a friendly little gathering at my sister Lorie's house. We played Balderdash and ate veggies with dip until the pre-recorded-for-our-time-zone ball dropped in New York. I hugged them all goodbye and headed for my parents' house.

Christmas break over, I left for Seattle the next morning. No chili-dog stain on the shirt this time. No man at a gas station calling me "hairball." There was just a long drive back to the other home--the one I've been at for at least nine months a year. This paradise, this Seattle.

Copyright © 1993