An argument with myself, part i

Every once and a while, I'll be at lunch with friends and we'll get to talking about a topic for five minutes or so. As one of my friends continues to talk about a professor or a book, my mind will drift. I'll see a palm tree outside and think of one Christmas when I was nine and living in Hawaii.

It's Capp family tradition to go to Midnight Mass and, upon our return to home, see that Santa has delivered a variety of commercialized packages of all shapes and sizes. My parents loved to have family friends or neighbors play tricks on our young, easily-fooled minds. Before, we'd heard sleigh bells in the back yard or found half a bite missing from a cookie we'd laid out for our present benefactor.

On this particular Christmas, we'd arrived home to find the lights dangling off the fifty-foot palm in our back yard. Since the tree was so tall, we'd only been able to spiral the lights half way up the trunk anyway, but we now found the lights flailing from only a quarter up the tree. To add a special touch, chunks of ice (probably frost from our deep freezer) sat melting at the foot of the palm.

It is with great pride that I now inform you that before we'd left for mass, my father had suggested that Santa might want something a bit harder than milk to go with his cookie. "He needs a cold one," Dad said. So we left a beer sitting by the plate of chocolate chip delights.

So, when we arrived back at the house after mass, my mother was able to say "Oh no, Santa must have had too much beer and hit the lights right off our tree with his sled. Look, he even knocked some ice off his sleigh." The message was clear: Kids, don't drink and drive.

Anytime I see a palm, I think of the monster we had in our backyard in Hawaii. Anytime I think of that palm, I think of that story (along with the many times I tried to climb it--most of these attempts were after seeing a Fijian effortlessly scale the tree at the Polynesian Cultural Center on the North Shore).

Back to the topic at hand. My friends will say something like "Someone in class actually questioned Dr. White about why he chose Plato's Apology in a class about great Greek philosophers!" I'll stare off at the palm, and when everyone becomes quiet, reflecting on the story about the philosophy class, I'll say, "Parents do crazy things."