Abington High School Student Arts Magazine Fifteen Year Retrospective 1999-2014 | Page 49

An Inch of the Grinch each year

process of "Thank you so much, I had no clues!", and "Oh my Gods!", and then you go back to bed. You sleep for a little bit and roll out of bed around 12, 12:30. You walk into the kitchen where mom tells you, "Wash up, we're heading over to Auntie Kathie's place." God bless her, but her house is about as boring as a stone dungeon. You would rather get a tooth pulled, but for some reason year after year your family (who are about as exciting as a stone dungeon themselves) decides to have some annual festivities take place there. This usually means you're sitting by yourself, acting like an anti-social miser, while you eat dry turkey. You spend your time there watching really bizarre and cheesy Christmas "Classics", and you know you're going to drop cranberry sauce on your new white Old Navy T-shirt.

You get really thirsty from that dry turkey and you go out for some sparkling cider, and what a surprise, the evening's entertainment is beginning. The relatives are drunk and starting to argue. Soon there's yelling and your parents decide to leave. See you guys next year, thanks for the tube socks. That's some high quality Christmas cheer, if you ask me.

All in all, you manage to make it out of 2004 alive, and you resume your normal, boring life. The lights are taken down and the jolly Christmas carols are no longer in rotation. Out of sight, out of mind. All you've got to show for Christmas is 5 extra pounds and a purple stain on your new shirt.

I wish for only one thing. I wish I could count down the days once it's December 1st, and be completely and utterly fascinated

when I wake up on the morning of the 25th. I wish I could wake my older brother up way too early, and be greeted by mounds of decorative misshapen boxes surrounding the tree like a red and green fortress. I wish I could leave Rudolph and his friends the carrots and celery they deserve (after all they must be hungry with all that hard work they're doing). And most of all, I wish I could have that same sparkle in my eyes that I got when I read the thank you note from Santa. He was always grateful for the milk, whether it was warm or not.

Who knows, maybe when I have children of my own, they'll rub some of their Christmas cheer on me; I can only cross my fingers and hope for the best. Maybe even this year will be a different story. But now that day most of us are looking forward to draws near, what do you say we dig in to some Figgie pudding and have us a time. Heck, we're up to our ears in it anyway, right?

44

ARTWORK

Top Left:

"Apples, Cups, Sticks"

Rachel Clarke, 2011

Honorable Mention, Painting

Top Right:

"The Argument"

Sarah Spencer, 2011

National Gold Key, Photography