A "touching" Christmas story
The staff at my workplace decided to do a Secret Santa gift exchange this year, with Secret Santas giving each other little gifts for the two weeks that lead up to our work Christmas party. One of my co-workers (who happens to be my running partner who ran my first half-marathon with me) has jury duty during the week before the party, including the day of the party. My co-worker was not sure if it would be worth participating in the Secret Santa activities if she couldn't be there for half of them, and anyway she thought that Secret Santa had just not been especially fun in recent years. Poor co-worker! She had lost her faith in Secret Santa! But everybody else was participating in Secret Santa, so she succumbed to peer pressure and put her name in the drawing. And it just happened that I drew her name.
At our staff meeting we went around the room, and each of us listed off a few things that we like to give our Secret Santas some ideas. As we were going around, one of our co-workers said something that sounded like "poop" to us, and we made a joke about it. She clarified what she had actually said, and we went on. When we got to my running partner, she listed things including chocolate and things that make her laugh, and then she added, "No poop! Although, that would probably make me laugh!"
I went home trying to think of ideas for her Secret Santa gifts and eventually happened to glance at my bulletin board where I keep little amusing things that others have given me and was surprised to find a couple of (in)appropriate Christmas pictures that people had given me over the years. One was a snowman pooping ice cream into an ice cream cone, and the other was Santa in his sleigh on top of an outhouse yelling at his reindeer "No, no, no! I said off to the Schmidt house!" I was immediately inspired to use these images, and knowing that my running partner loves both chocolate and practical jokes, my plan came together perfectly! Over the past week I left her gifts of "snowman poop" (Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream) and "reindeer poop" (glops of a chocolate-peanut-butter-oatmeal mix), and I supplemented it with practical jokes like wrapping her desk and filing cabinet in wrapping paper taped down so thoroughly that she couldn't get into her drawers until she cut through it.
She and I only have shifts that overlap one day each week, and that's Saturday afternoons. And so after a week of this, I was finally there to see her reaction (to the "reindeer poop"). She laughed hysterically at it and started telling me and the other co-worker who was there about the best practical jokes she has played on various people throughout her lifetime. She was then inspired to spend the next hour running around my workplace setting up little practical jokes on every staff member who was not present at the time. She also commented that she had an idea for a practical joke that she was planning for me that I think she was planning to set up after my shift ended yesterday. She told me, not knowing that I am her Secret Santa, how she had "lost her faith" but that she was very glad she had decided to participate this year because of how much fun the practical jokes are. And that's how poop restored her faith in Secret Santa. I think that this should be a new Christmas movie... kind of like The Polar Express, except with poop instead of a train. I just hope that my other co-workers don't hate me for unleashing the practical-joking monster upon them!
At our staff meeting we went around the room, and each of us listed off a few things that we like to give our Secret Santas some ideas. As we were going around, one of our co-workers said something that sounded like "poop" to us, and we made a joke about it. She clarified what she had actually said, and we went on. When we got to my running partner, she listed things including chocolate and things that make her laugh, and then she added, "No poop! Although, that would probably make me laugh!"
I went home trying to think of ideas for her Secret Santa gifts and eventually happened to glance at my bulletin board where I keep little amusing things that others have given me and was surprised to find a couple of (in)appropriate Christmas pictures that people had given me over the years. One was a snowman pooping ice cream into an ice cream cone, and the other was Santa in his sleigh on top of an outhouse yelling at his reindeer "No, no, no! I said off to the Schmidt house!" I was immediately inspired to use these images, and knowing that my running partner loves both chocolate and practical jokes, my plan came together perfectly! Over the past week I left her gifts of "snowman poop" (Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream) and "reindeer poop" (glops of a chocolate-peanut-butter-oatmeal mix), and I supplemented it with practical jokes like wrapping her desk and filing cabinet in wrapping paper taped down so thoroughly that she couldn't get into her drawers until she cut through it.
She and I only have shifts that overlap one day each week, and that's Saturday afternoons. And so after a week of this, I was finally there to see her reaction (to the "reindeer poop"). She laughed hysterically at it and started telling me and the other co-worker who was there about the best practical jokes she has played on various people throughout her lifetime. She was then inspired to spend the next hour running around my workplace setting up little practical jokes on every staff member who was not present at the time. She also commented that she had an idea for a practical joke that she was planning for me that I think she was planning to set up after my shift ended yesterday. She told me, not knowing that I am her Secret Santa, how she had "lost her faith" but that she was very glad she had decided to participate this year because of how much fun the practical jokes are. And that's how poop restored her faith in Secret Santa. I think that this should be a new Christmas movie... kind of like The Polar Express, except with poop instead of a train. I just hope that my other co-workers don't hate me for unleashing the practical-joking monster upon them!