Cracker’s JiveAss Blog

I had an odd experience today in the student store. Not Earth shattering exactly but it threw me for a loop and I dont quite get it.

I was purchasing a double chocolate, vegan cookie and while depositing my change in my bag I caught sight of an advent calendar. Now, for those of you who did not have the blessed fortune of being raised by a very religious family, advent calendars have 25 little windows to open up one by one on each day leading up to Christmas day. Some calendars have little bible verses under the windows you open and some have little drawings of festive things such as snowmen, angels, or candy canes. But some have chocolate hidden under each and every one of those little windows and it goes without saying that on the years we had the chocolate filled calendars, every morning was a race to get up and break into the flimsy cardboard that held our treasured treats. My parents rarely indulged us with these.

So, this calendar was naturally one of these chocolate laden booklets and when I caught sight of it after purchasing my cookie it caused me to come to a complete stop. I must have spent 5 seconds just staring at the silly decoration while holding up the line until the woman behind the counter offered to help the person behind me as a gentle prodding to move me along. I fought the overwhelming urge to grab one and take it home with me.

Now, few people I know would describe me as sentimental and if there’s one thing that really won’t stir up nostalgia for me it’s tacky, religious ornamentation. However, for some reason I had an overwhelming wave of gushy, wispy images of happy, holiday cheer. My family laughing. Christmas lights. Fires in the woodstove. Hot peppermint tea and sugar cookies. And, while all of those things existed at times in my family, they very rarely came more than one at a time, let alone more than one in a holiday week.

For a brief second I was transported into an only partially reality-based version of my own past that was intense enough to inspire me to hold up the 5 people already late for their finals behind me and spend $2.85 on something I’d never in a million years normally spend money on. What the hell was going on in my funny, little head? It was such a strong gut reaction that I physically felt myself snap out of it. And thank god I did. Otherwise I’d be sitting here at 4.30 in the morning writing here to justify my purchase of another piece of consumer crap that I don’t need. But then again, I might wake up in the morning with a piece of chocolate and flashes of my family laughing, christmas lights, fires in the woodstove and hot peppermint tea and sugar cookies…real or not.

Maybe it was just all of the pills I’ve had to take since I hurt my back this week.

Tags: Ramblings

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 2:39 am and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.