dear diary (fun with gift wrapping) 12/29/2008

dear diary,

i'm so sick of the "holiday" season. i think i want to stab my ears if i hear one more christmas song. my daughter has followed me around my house playing her i-pod of christmas shoes until i admitted that i love the song just so it will stop. i woke up this morning with the song "we three kings" stuck in my head, only because i have a battery operated nativity scene that plays the song...and the batteries are about to die so it sounds really freaky and that's the version i was singing too. it almost makes one scared of baby jesus. watching the kids open their gifts from santa was fun. yes, my kids believe in santa and i'm not going to hell for letting them believe in it either, so you can just shut up. can you tell how bitter i am? i honestly think it's because of this time of year. i hate to admit that, but i think it is. everyone seems to be stressed. maybe it's because of the economy and the looming fact that we are on a downward spiral? i don't know. what i do know is that humor allows for brighter days. laughter is uplifting, and it's free. it doesn't cost us anything. i like to be the focal point of laughter a lot of the times. i don't see anything wrong with it. sure i can get out of hand, and sometimes i need to be brought back to reality...because i have kids now. they watch me, and mimic me and my wife. they like the same music my wife and i do. my kids love coldplay, U2 and everything that's in our CD player in the car. sorry...with 4 kids the necessity of having sirius satellite isn't worth it to me (i'd rather spend the money on food and clothing). anyway...i know i'm rambling really bad in this blog, and i swear i have a point...that's funny. it's a story actually. i guess you can call the aforementioned a preface? call it what you will. this time of the year reminds me of a time when a friend of mine and myself decided i should be gift wrapped at a mall. this is the same friend i broke into the mall with...let the story begin.


it was winter. it was a typical cold michigan winter. the kind where the snot freezes INSIDE your nose. i was working at roush racing with my friend rick. we found a box...a big box...a box big enough to fit me inside. so we took it. i put it in the back of my pickem' up truck along with a dolley. you see, we thought that it would be funny to see if i can be gift wrapped by the fine people at a local mall (southland). here we have 2 idiots wheeling a box into the mall with one intention. rick and i didn't really plan many of the pranks we pulled, we made them up as we went along. as we're presenting our case to the gift wrapping department i took it upon myself to climb inside the box and get into a fetal position so the box can close properly. laughter from the surrounding departments started to get louder as people gathered around to see what was so funny. rick decided to tell people that i'm getting gift wrapped for my girlfriend that i was going to propose to in 3 days because she was out of town and this was the best time for us to do it. i was single at the time. nobody caught that i was going to be like this for 3 days...they just thought it was romantic. this story changed once we entered the mall. the only change was that i was now naked (or so he told everyone that asked). there were moments were rick would say things like "i'm wheeling you into the food court now" just so i knew where i was at. everytime the cart would stop...i would move the box a little. i could hear people say things like, "what the hell?" or "did that box just move?" rick would then begin the story of why i was in there and that again...i was naked and was going to jump out of my box to surprise my girlfriend with a ring that never existed in 3 days. "aww...how sweet" would soon follow...not realizing that i would be like this for 3 days. someone finally got wise and asked, "if he's in there for 3 days, how is he eating and using the bathroom?" ahh...thank you for the bright question. rick answered immediately by saying i had an empty pickle jar and then he demonstrated on how easily a slice of sbarro's pizza slid under the taped slot in the box. people are gullible. the joke was to see how gullible they are. they believe anything. i like to think that somewhere right now there is someone thinking back on that one guy in the mall that proposed to his girlfriend (that i never had, with the ring i never owned, and really not naked). i hope i made you laugh.

i love you,
maynard