Nostalgic Moments of Christmas #12

For fun, I'm going to post one of my most favorite Christmas memories randomly from now until Christmas. I've been becoming quite Scrooge as of late and I need something to put me in the holiday spirit. Most of these will be funny, but a few may or may not be sentimental. There may be 12 of them or not.... I don't know and I really don't know the pattern. Heck, I might post 2 or 3 in a day, but that's unlikely. I'll probably post something in between a memory, like a contest or a writing update or a rant about something. The point is... I don't have a point to this other than creating the Christmas mood on my blog. And here we go...

#12 - I've blogged about this before, so for those stalwart followers of my website, this will be a repeat post. But for you others (recent joinees and random looker-inners) this will be a treat.


It was Christmas eve 2001. Heidi and I stayed the night with her family and slept on the couch with her brothers and sister as we eagerly awaited the arrival of Christmas morning. Heidi was pregnant with my first son, Jackson, and on the verge of popping (he arrived in February.) We had spent the evening playing games and watching movies, and if I recall correctly, I had fallen asleep in the middle of the movie on the couch. It was warm and peaceful and I dreamed of sugar plums (which by-the-way I've never had one, but they sound exquisite.) 


Soon, all of us older kids were nestled snug on the enormous family room couch, snoozing. Suddenly, sometime past midnight, my dreams of sugar plums changed into a horrifying spectacle. There I sat in a warehouse in front of a bay door with Heidi sitting next to me holding our son. Although, I can't remember exactly what he looked like, I'll wager Jackson looked a little like a baby Bob Costas in my dream (that's for you cousin John). When all of a sudden, a tractor-trailer began to back towards us. Why we were sitting there, I have no clue. And why we didn't move when the reverse beep of the truck sounded off, baffles me. It was a dream, people. Needless to say, we were in trouble. The truck continued to back and we sat frozen to the floor. I knew I needed to do some drastic, so I sat straight up and shouted at the top of my lungs.


"HEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!"


Meanwhile, in ma and pa Hickok's basement, the scene unfolded in real life. Their downstairs doesn't have any windows and the room was cloaked in total darkness. I must have shouted for a solid minute. Everyone woke up, disturbed, confused, and wondering why I was still shouting.


Keri, my sister-in-law, took the startling wake-up call the worst and I remember hearing her desperately ask Heidi what the heck I was doing. My mind still hovered somewhere in between the dream world and reality, but I managed to shout, in my best Gollum impersonation,


"My Precioussssssssss."


To which Keri started bawling.


Feliz Navidad!