"How were your holidays?"

Well, funny you asked.  I was supposed to have a big happy gathering at my house but at the last minute as I was prepping the organic, free-range, locally farmed, $7.99 a pound bird for the oven I noticed an odd darkish color protruding from under the ginormous left wing.  Sensing dread before I even saw it, I lifted the wing and saw the mangled body of a small field mouse tucked in, safely rotting away in its little perch. My mother, who's a total freak about food, speculated the mouse could have a disease and refused to do anything but throw it out. 


When my dad, another Diva of Food, found out we'd be eating, at best, at some shitty restaurant on Thanksgiving he became increasingly sour and increasingly drunk.  He informed me sometime around 1pm that this brand of fuck-up is typical of me and began bitingly recalling every other family holiday where my efforts have wound up in either his rage or disappointment.  Recall, he'd said, the Christmas of 1993 when I convinced him to part with the dollars to take the entire family to see a movie on Christmas Day - a rare treat and unusual behavior for my parents. 


So I'd eyed this movie, Short Cuts, by director Robert Altman, who'd collected, said the newspaper, several indie accolades and mainstream prizes for the film.  Knowing nothing about what it was about, imagine my family's Yuletide delight as this disjointed, depressing circle-jerk masterpiece reaches a cresendo with actress Julianne Moore baring her full beaver.  It stared us point blank in our awed cinema-lit faces, boldly daring us to look away while she delivered a very long, pissed-off monologue.  Something the whole family can enjoy: Mom, age 43, and her three lovely kids, ages 20, 16, and my hormonal brother, 14, and Dad too, yes, but who could ever forget good old Grandma, then just a sprightly 71 years old and practically more of a child than all of us could ever hope to be.  Merry Christmas to us all! 

Julianne Moore and her bare ass cheek, just before the money shot.

Now in a proper rage at this memory and other carnages of holidays past, my dear old Dad departs half shitfaced, bidding me, in his delicate way, to "piss up a rope".  That being settled, I call my other Dad who lives a couple of hours away to see if I can join him and my stepmother's family for the holiday, (and offering to bring a fabulous free-range, locally farmed turkey as an extra, if need be.) 


Once the children are in the car and we're off to our not-quite-family's house for a real family Thanksgiving, the car breaks down.  The tires are fine, we realize.  The engine seems to start.  And then it hits us both, the check oil light has been on for so goddamn long that we thought it was just a permanent part of the dashboard architecture.  My husband, genetically incapable of telling an oil cap from a radiator cap, even if a vision of a topless Emmanuelle Chiquiri appeared on said oil cap and purred "Turn Me, Big Boy", burned himself badly upon grabbing the radiator cap.  Nothing left to do then but to share the holiday with our emergency service workers.  The kids, after they stopped crying, were thrilled about riding in the ambulance.  My 3 year old peed her pants, for good measure.  It was agony.

The ER: wholly dismal: caterwauling infants and their paranoid parents; the guy with a bleeding finger who has my 6 year old captivated "Is he going to DIE?"; a smattering of vacant seniors who look like someone dropped them off over two weeks ago; and my youngest, who by now has even realized, through the prism of her childhood lens, that this is a bad start to a litany of karmic-port-a-potty holidays.  To appease them both, I got them M & M's and peanut butter filled cheese crackers and let them play with the drinking fountain while Mr. Jiffy Lube found out how long it'd be before he could ever touch the remote again. 


By the time we got home it was kind of late and we just decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches.  It was pretty fucking sad, even by my own standards.  And since my husband had passed out on percoset and the kids were finally asleep I decided, as a rare treat, to take my pink vibrator out for a spin, you know, just to go to my happy place, but apparently the batteries -- wait...wait!  What do you mean you're sorry you asked?? *

So the question gets asked, in different iterations, googl times in workplaces, casual conversations on the street, bumping into friends in the store, making small talk over dinner parties:  "What are you doing for the holidays" and "How were your holidays?".   And I especially like "Doing anything good/special/fun over the holidays?"  It makes me want to lie something fierce.  This is the version of that kind of question that I always ask....hoping to find, well, someone who will lie something fierce.

Do you care? The inquiry is the seasonal suit of the regular old "How are you? How are things going?"  We ask, but in 94% of all instances, we could give a fuck.  Don't get me wrong: I'm not a social abyss (not yet, anyhow), I want to know if something is actually happening in your life that is extra-ordinary.  If its ordinary: chances are its just like mine and that's not notable.  If its fucked-up and perverted: chances are you're not going to tell me anyway.

So, the question is asked, and as the first shape of the first consonant passes through the vocal cords in response you are already thinking about how you want to get this over with and get back to what you were doing before, whether you'll be able to waste time on Facebook tonight or if, for example, how funny it is that the person you're talking to has no idea that you're feeling silly and slightly dangerous because you wore a pink-trimmed leopard print bra today. 


Coming off the train tonight, a nice work colleague gave me the one-two punch - it nearly knocked me out:

"So, how was your thanksgiving"

Me: I didn't have to cook. I guess that says it all. (Insert wry smile)

"What are you doing for Christmas?" 

Me: Oh, you know...the usual. (Insert eye roll)

Dude, YOU DON'T CARE.  AND I KNOW IT.  And I'm like the Kervorkian of responses: I'm just cutting that shit as short as possible, to spare both you and me.  Its a mercy killing of a bad tack of conversation.  Its not kindness if you're replacing the silence with boredom.  I like you even if you don't ask.  I probably like you more, if you don't ask. 

I feel like we'd be better off just coming up to our acquaintances and saying something more interesting, like

"Hey, there's this really cool band I've been listening to lately - do you like New World Urban Jewish Ballads?" 

or

"Yesterday I hocked a loogey onto the street.  Isn't that weird? I mean, seriously, when was the last time you actually DID something like that.  Ah, to be young again!"

or

"I know this is random, but I keep seeing these two same 10-cent words in every thing I read lately - peripatetic and concupisence - and I have no idea what they mean, do you?"

or

"What can I make for a (insert eating event here - brunch/lunch/tete-a-tete/coming out party) that would go good with green beans?"

or

"You're a guy. Why do certain guys have valets?  I mean, do you have one? You can tell me."

Really, there's so many better things to ask.  Things that might make people think you're crazy, but its probably better than driving them crazy with questions that only the people who panic and have nothing else to say ask (which is exactly what I did the other day talking to my boss's boss).

What do you say to someone when you feel you must talk but have nothing better to say?  What inane thing could you say instead?

*This is a depiction of a farcical Thanksgiving holiday.  In fact, all parts of this post are untrue, except for that bit about the family on Christmas Day 1993. Truth. Trust.