View from the North 40: It's a bumpy ride toward a miracle

Hang on, this is going to be a two-parter because in order to understand my Christmas, you have to know the background, the dark side of the story.

Think about it. If you didn’t know Ebenezer Scrooge’s cold-hearted, skin-flinty past, present and future, you wouldn’t be awed by the miracle of his Christmas generosity. You would think, “Why did that ridiculous old fart wait until Christmas morning to buy his turkey? Procrastinators like that are a pain in the baster.” Then you would go on with your day, never awed, never having a soft, melty, Christmas-miracle heart.

Our story starts the day I was born, aka one of the top 10 worst days of my older brother’s life. Surely, if he hadn’t been 2 years old at the time, he would’ve marked the date on the calendar as the day a little piece of hell drew breath on Earth.

Our mother told me that from the very beginning brother worked to banish me from his life. He was, according to her, always pinching, scratching, biting, pushing and smacking me. When he wasn’t throwing my own toys at me, he was breaking them and throwing their tattered, shattered remains as me.

Our mother, being a woman of infinite compassion and maternal concern, said to me on more than one occasion, “You would cry occasionally, but you always bounced back, and eventually you got old enough you’d hold your own with him most of the time, so I just didn’t worry.” So, yes, he just kept torturing me and I learned to be resilient. More importantly, though, I learned to outsmart him.

It’s not that he was stupid, really, it’s that he wasn’t very clever. And for the record, it’s not that I am really clever, it’s just that I am more clever than he is. You know how you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your hiking partner. Same concept.

He couldn’t think outside of the box. He might bite, and not let go of, my finger, but I realize I can wiggle the finger around and scratch up the inside of his mouth.

He might lick his entire candy bar, staring at me in defiance, because he has to go to the bathroom and doesn’t want me to eat the candy bar while he’s gone. I figure he’s wrong because I don’t want his candy bar – I have my own. But since he is also right – I don’t want to eat his slobber – I just throw his candy in the garbage so he can’t eat it or his own slobber, either.

He might be able to run farther than me, but I run to the creek and drop his perfumed letter from a girl out of town in the running water just before he catches me so he has to rescue the letter instead of beat me up for teasing him.

Of course, the two flaws in the system were that he was two years older than me and that he had a wicked-fast temper.

The same athletic genes ran through both of us, and with those two years of growth and what turned out to be at least 6” of height, I physically couldn’t best him. But that temper was a real weakness to be capitalized on, especially he had a real need to be in control, my superior in all things and true moral quandaries. I just had to be willing to risk physical damage to win the moral victory.

No problem.

In the midst of any heated argument or fight, a well-timed smile with a liberal hint of smirk in it, maybe even a snort or a laugh if I needed to bring out the big guns, and I might be picking myself up off the floor, but I would be undisputed winner of the go-round because he’d be storming out of the room. Possibly crying.

Pam slams it home for the win.

But where’s the happy ending?

Can there really be a Christmas miracle between two such adversaries?

Part 2 coming up next week.

(It will include a story about an attempted ax murder, too. It’ll be great Christmas fun at [email protected].)