A few months after I finally learned how to ride a bike without training wheels, my bike was stolen. I was so sad that it got stolen I believe I kicked a mailbox and maybe even cursed the sky. Well, losing a bike is one of the perils of living in the big, bad city I guess. Even though I loved that bike, it was gone now and I had to find a way to get another or I would be forced to bum rides on the handlebars of my friends. So I did what every kid in the world does when they want something they know they have no right to have and no means to acquire.

I pestered my mom, day and night, until she caved in.

My new bike was a real beauty. It was cool blue, sleek and damn sexy, but not in a girly-sexy way. In fact, forget what I just said. It wasn’t sexy at all, it was cool. Manly-cool, like Batman Underoos or the Millenium Falcon. Just because it had multicolored streamers hanging from the handlebars and metallic sky-blue paint didn’t mean my bike was for girls. So Daid K., wherever you are, you’re still a poopy-head and my Alchemist Smurf could soooo kick your Smurferman’s ass.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, sorry.

I don’t know if bikes today work the way my bike did, but my bike had no handbrakes. In order to stop, I had to press backward on the pedals which would stop my forward motion and bring my bike to a halt. One fun side effect of such a braking method was the almost immediate discovery that one could ‘Skid Out’. Skidding out, for those who don’t know, meant riding as fast as you could and then hitting the brakes while turning the bike almost on its side and sliding to a halt. The longer the slide before the stop, the better the Skid Out.

I was a Master Skid Out Artist.

One day I was practicing my skidding technique outside on the street when something ‘bad’ happened. Back and forth, up and down the block I would go, tearing up the street and skidding out to my heart’s delight. I was going faster and faster and faster, having bigger and bigger Skid Outs, until suddenly and without warning something went wrong. To this day I don’t know what it was, but as soon as it began I clearly remember thinking to myself, “Oh, this is going to be bad.”

No, really. I did.

You know how the pedals on bikes have little teeth on them to help keep your feet from slipping off? Well, in spite of those teeth, my left foot slipped off and hit the ground in front of the bike. The pedal, blissfully unaware that my foot had fallen from its rightful place, continued on in its revolution and came down on my calf like a hot knife on a stick of room temperature butter. Keep in mind that the pedals have teeth.

Sharp, pointy teeth.

The pedal tore through my pants, ripped apart my sock like tissue paper and bit into my leg like a rabid wolf bringing down a sickly deer. The pain was immediate and blinding. I fell down and did the sucking-of-air-through-teeth thing that everone does when they’re trying really, really hard not to scream/weep in agonizing pain. Had I been going any faster, I’m sure I would have severed my own Achilles tendon, but luckily all I did was rip the back of my leg to shreds.

I’m proud to say that I did not cry.

Somehow, I not only managed to hobble home, but to also drag the bike along with me. After all of the expected hysterics had died down and we had come back from the hospital, I had a moment alone to reflect on my day. It was then, and only then, that I allowed myself to ask the question that’s probably running through your head right now. Would I have a scar? Not just any scar, but a cool scar to show off to all the hotties at school and maybe get some ‘play’? Could this tragic accident somehow lead to an increase in my cool factor and finally get Stacy V. to notice me as more than ‘The Dork With Cooties’? Would she touch my leg in class, or my arm at lunch like she did to James? Would she (gulp) kiss me?

My testicles dropped that night and by morning I had not one, but three pubes.

Sadly, my lusted after tryst with Stacy never happened. My damn body wouldn’t let me off that easy and it healed completely, with no visible scars, probably just to spite me in my vain attempt to become cool and get some sweet-lovin’ from the fly honeys in school. Since I didn’t have anything to show for my pain, I didn’t get any cool points for my accident from anybody, not even my closest friends. The cute girls continued to avoid me like the plague and flock to my brother like bees to honey.

No, I’m not bitter at all.

To this day, if I flex my calf you can feel the lump of scar tissue under the skin that is the only reminder of my last day as a Master Skid Out Artist. A few months after my accident, the Bike of Blue Death was also stolen and I was not at all sad to see it go.

Stupid, stupid bike.

This week is all about bikes and pain.

When I was a young boy I had a fabulous pedal-powered dirt bike. It was a specific type of bike known as a ‘Chopper’ that I don’t believe is made anymore. It had a low-rider type seat and three gears (speeds) to choose from. You chose your gear by shifting a lever that sat directly in front of the seat, between the seat and the handlebars. If you’re a guy, think about that placement for a moment and you might understand why these bikes aren’t made anymore.

Yeah, I know. Ow.

Anywaste, one day my father decided I was too old for training wheels and I should learn how to ride a bike like a real man. Not wanting to disappoint him, I hastily agreed and we removed the wheels, went outside and started to ride. Remember, this was long before such things as safety helmets or elbow pads and we were on the cement sidewalk outside my apartment building next to a very busy street.

I tried to be brave.

After a few minutes of trial and error, my father had the bright idea of holding onto the back of my seat and running alongside me while I got the hang of balancing myself without training wheels. At first we went slow and my dad did most of the balancing for me, but after a few tries I was getting better. My confidence on the rise, I asked my dad if we could go a little faster.

The twinkle in his eye should have been my first warning.

He held onto the back of the bike this time, so he could keep up, or so he said. I started pedaling as fast as I dared and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was really riding a bike without any help. I yelled back to my father, “Look at me go dad!”

From far behind me I heard my father yell, “That’s the way son!”

I laughed out loud and thought how great it was to be riding my bike without training wheels, even if my father was holding onto it so I wouldn’t fall. I was a real man now, I could ride my bike for real! I was so proud of myself. Maybe next time I’d try riding without my father holding on to me. Maybe I…

Wait a second.

Stealing a quick glance backwards, I saw my father standing about 50 feet behind me, smiling like a merciless inquisitor in a medieval torture chamber about to hear a ‘confession’. Looking forwards again, I saw the end of the block coming up fast. Suddenly, I didn’t know what to do. In my head, I knew that I should stop or scream or something, but I just couldn’t seem to remember how.

I also conveniently forgot how to steer.

I was coming fast to the end of the block. On the end of the block, directly in my path, there stood a lamppost. Of course, I was headed straight for the hard, painful looking, steel base of said lamppost. At speed.

Face, meet post. Post, this is face.

I don’t remember much of the actual crash, it was a blur of motion, a glimpse of steel, the sound of a large bell quickly followed by the cracking sound of something soft hitting pavement and finally silence. I remember my fathers footsteps as he ran up to where I was lying, unmoving in the street. He looked down at me and I opened my eyes and looked up at him. I opened my mouth and he leaned down to better hear my words.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“Remind me to kick your ass in twenty years.”

He laughed so hard he had to sit down on the sidewalk next to me and wipe his eyes.

“Come on, GeekMan! Let’s burn rubber!”

“Yeah! Let’s peel out!”

“Go GeekMan, go!”

“Just like Pole Position, man! ‘Prepare to qualify!’”

I was 20 years old and my friends and I were waiting for my teeny-tiny, four-speed, Dodge Omni to warm up as we sat in the parking lot of the mall after seeing some action-packed, thrill ride of a movie. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, and possessing far less than my fair share of college brain cells, I decided that I would grant my friends’ request because peeling out of the lot would be lots of fun. Besides, my friends wanted to do something crazy and wasn’t I the coolest and craziest sumbitch on the planet?

Damn straight I was.

I looked in front of my car and saw nothing but an empty lot as far as the eye could see. I checked out the rear view mirror and was surprised to see no one there either. I guess going to the late, late show at the theater was good for something after all.

I revved the engine like a stock car racer and gave my friends an evil grin.

It was at that moment that a little light bulb of ingenuity stupidity went off in my head. If peeling out while going forward was thrilling and exciting, I thought to myself, then wouldn’t going in reverse be an even bigger thrill? My friends would never expect me to do that so my ‘crazy-cool’ quotient would go up another notch, making me super ‘crazy-cool’ and thereby irresistible to women. A quick daydream involving myself, the redheaded beauty down the hall and the blonde twins in my theater class followed.

I had a vivid, if slightly unrealistic, imagination.

Throwing caution and common sense to the wind, I threw the car into reverse and stomped on the gas. Rubber melted, my friends screamed in delight and we took off at over 50mph

Backwards.

Let me take a moment now to reiterate that I didn’t see anyone else anywhere in the lot. As far as I could tell, the place was empty and I really did check my rearview mirror.

Twice.

However, I must have had a blind spot because I somehow didn’t notice the huge 4-door, 1984 Cutlass Supreme parked two rows behind me. I also didn’t notice the two high school teenagers, obviously on their first date, making out inside.

I hit them midway between the front and rear doors on the passenger side. Hard.

When the police arrived on the scene half an hour later, they were amazed to find the Oldsmobile nearly folded in half and completely unsalvageable and my tiny, pathetic Dodge Omni with nothing more than a slightly scuffed paintjob. That’s right, my car kicked their car’s ass. Amazingly, no one was hurt, no one was arrested and miraculously, the kids’ fathers never pressed charges against me.

I wonder if those kids ever had a second date?

Anywaste, all I got was a $200 ticket for reckless driving and a stern warning from the officers to watch out when backing up in the future. I told them how sorry I was and then tried to make light of the situation by asking them to put me out of my misery and shoot me.

The officers were not amused.

Quickly thanking them and beating a hasty retreat, my friends and I got into my Omni-potent Dodge and began the drive back to campus, slowly and safely. Because we were hungry after our exciting ordeal, we couldn’t resist stopping at a nearby Denny’s for a Grand Slam to talk about our exciting evening. It was there at Denny’s that my evening morphed from a simple bad day into a truly legendary night of torturous horror.

I got locked out of the car.

But that’s not all. Oh no, that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? You see, not only did I accidentally lock the car keys inside the car, but the same officers from my earlier accident showed up to help me get back inside. I was forced to endure 40 minutes of alcohol and drug testing right there in the parking lot of Denny’s, all the while explaining that I was just a stupid moron and not high or drunk. After they got the door open I didn’t ask them to shoot me, because I was afraid that this time they really would.

In fact, I’m sure they would have.

After that night, my friends no longer considered me ‘crazy-cool’; they just considered me a ‘psychotic-lunatic’. And after this story made the campus rounds, the twins would huddle together and whisper anytime that I dared to approach. And I never even found out the name of the cute redhead down the hall.

I really miss that car.

When I was about 8 years old, I had an electronic toy similar to a Casio keyboard that made ‘computer’ noises when you pressed certain buttons. One day, my cousin and I were bored and decided to entertain ourselves by building a machine that would answer any question anyone could ask of it. Never mind that we didn’t have any tools and the only computer we’d ever seen was on TV and always shouting “Danger, Will Robinson!” We figured all we’d need was a few crayons, some paper, my toy and a big cardboard box.

Fortunately, my mother had just gotten a new TV.

We cut a hole in the top of the box just big enough for a piece of paper, put the paper and crayons inside the box and wrote The Answerizer on the outside. I took my computer noise making toy and sat inside the box ready to write the answer to any question on the paper and push it through the slot. We figured that since it would sound like a computer everyone would think it was a computer. Especially since no one would be able to see me inside. Now, all we needed was someone to test our machine on.

My cousin went to the kitchen to get my mother.

When my mother saw this cardboard box in the middle of the living room with the word Answerizer written on it in big, bold, red Crayola letters and computer noises coming out of it, I can’t believe she didn’t fall to the floor and break down with laughter. Instead, she played along and asked a question.

“Are my kids going to drive me crazy?”

A few moments later, her answer came out.

“No, you already are.”

She did not like this answer and to show her displeasure, she kicked the box. To be fair, she didn’t kick hard at all and she couldn’t have known that I was leaning up against the side of the box trying to listen to what was going on. Satisfied that she had exacted her revenge, she turned to go back to the kitchen. However, before she could leave, another piece of paper came out of the Answerizer.

“See? You are crazy.”

We were ordered to dismantle the Answerizer immediately. We never built another one.

If you missed the first two parts of this series, they are here and here.

In the morning, I awoke to the wonderful smells of my uncle Kermit’s Famous Perfectly Round Silver Dollar Pancakes being made in the kitchen. No one else in the house appeared to be awake yet so an idea formed in my head. Since I was a young man with an unhealthy addiction to Dungeons & Dragons, I thought I could begin my training as a master thief (elfish, of course) by sneaking into the kitchen and stealing a delicious pancake without my uncle ever knowing. I decided that this was the perfect opportunity for me to work on my Hiding in Shadows and Move Silently skills. Both were at a meager 30%.

Hopefully, I wouldn’t get caught and need to make a Saving Throw vs. Punishment. I always failed those.

Ninja-like, I crept from the living room sofa bed where my cousins, brother and I were sleeping. By slowly sliding off the bed instead of bouncing off, I avoided waking them or making any squeaking noises that would give away my position to my uncle. My uncle, blissfully unaware of the silent death in Aquaman Underoos sneaking up on him, continued with his pancake ministrations.

I smiled in anticipation of fluffy, pancakey goodness.

Making my way slowly to the kitchen, I stalked my pray as the wolves on the open plains. I moved like a cloud on a windless night, making no sound save my own beating heart. I approached the kitchen door like a wraith, he would never even know I was there. Look at that fool, happily making pancakes. Perhaps I should backstab him with my aqua-slipper while I’m at it. He won’t even suspect…

“Good morning GeekMan! While you’re up why don’t you set the table?”

What?!? He must be a 10th level wizard to detect my stealthy approach. No mortal man could possibly have heard me. Am I not GeekMan, Master Thief of Upper Elronadom? How was this possible?

“Sure, Uncle Kermit. No problem.”

I’ll get you, uncle. Oh, yes. And you shall rue the day you defied me. Do you hear me? Rue! BwahahahaHAHAHAhahaha!

I began setting the table.

A little later my Aunt Miss Piggy joined my Uncle in the kitchen. After a few moments, I heard something that sounded a lot like laughter. Listening a little harder as I set the table in the dining room, I thought I heard my uncle say, “Well, how was I to know? They look the same and what in the world would anyone use that for, anyway?”

My Aunt just laughed harder.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my Uncle had made a mistake that was going to come back and haunt everyone in the house. Especially him and his reputation as the families master chef. A half-hour later, everyone was awake and sitting at the table eagerly awaiting some Christmas morning pancakes. My aunt and uncle brought out the plates piled high with sausage, bacon, eggs, potatoes and pancakes and we attacked the food like Amazonian red army ants on a dead monkey’s corpse.

In my family it’s serve yourself, and quickly, or go hungry.

Usually, when we eat my uncle’s pancakes, we all ooh and ah in admiration of his culinary skills. But this time, as I bit into a pancake, I noticed something peculiar. It didn’t taste the way I remembered it tasting. In fact, it didn’t taste much like a pancake at all. Looking around the table, I saw a look of consternation on almost everyone’s face. We were all still chewing, but no one was swallowing. Looking across the table at my Aunt Miss Piggy, I noticed that she hadn’t touched her pancakes and was just sitting there watching all of us with an almost constipated look on her face. Uncle Kermit’s face turned beet-red as he saw us, one by one stop eating and look at him.

“It’s really not my fault.” He said. “What the hell is Aunt SuLu doing with a whole bottle of Orange Extract in her cabinet?”

My Aunt Miss Piggy laughed so hard that she accidentally knocked over her plate of food onto the floor.

It seems my uncle forgot to read the labels and poured a half bottle of orange extract into the pancake mix instead of vanilla extract. Let me tell you, orange extract and pancakes don’t mix well at all. In fact, mixing orange extract with milk in pancake batter is so god-awful that I think it was used as a method of torture in the Middle Ages. At the very least it’s on par with mixing OJ and toothpaste. My uncle has never lived that one episode down and every time he’s gone into the kitchen since, someone will almost always warn him to read the labels.

He really hates that.

Thank you for taking the time to read about one of my favorite Christmas memories. In the years to come, may your memories be as heartwarming and vibrant to you as this memory has been, and still is, for me.

Here’s to happy memories for everyone. Cheers.

The first part of this story can be found here.

After the monopoly incident we decided that we wouldn’t play any more board games. Instead, we got ready for dinner and sat down at the table to eat. After dinner we had a few hours to kill before midnight so we decided to watch a movie.

Then it was time to open presents.

We’re a very giving family, so everyone had lots and lots of presents both to give out and receive. We had a lot of fun ripping open presents and throwing the wrapping paper all over the living room. Sometimes I think my family loves unwrapping the presents almost as much as the actual presents themselves.

One thing I know for sure is that we love practical jokes.

Now keep in mind that I was about sixteen years old and like anyone that age with a drivers license, the only thing I wanted for Christmas was a car. Due to my many slick, suave and subtle teenage hints earlier in the year, my entire family was fully aware of my desire for a personal form of locomotion.

Especially my favorite aunt, Aunt SuLu.

After all of the presents had been given out and opened, and I had made it known to everyone just how disappointed I was that there was no car for me under the tree, my aunt SuLu handed me an envelope. By the way she looked at me when she handed me the envelope I knew this was something special. I ripped into that envelope like a starving hyena into a week-old buffalo carcass. Inside was a single white piece of paper with the words, “look in the garage” written on it in big, bold, black letters.

My heart skipped a beat and my mouth dropped open.

I screamed like a little girl invited to her first sleepover, dropped the card and took off like a shot for the garage. When I got to the garage I opened the door and ran inside fully expecting to see a brand new car waiting for me. Instead, the garage was bare to the walls with no new car in sight.

But there was something on the floor in the middle of the garage.

With my family standing in the doorway trying in vain to hold back their laughter, I walked over to the item in the middle of the floor. What I found was a nightmare. Resting on top of another white card was a teeny, tiny and very ugly matchbox car. Picking up the car I was able to read what was inscribed on the card.

Gotcha.

For a moment I couldn’t believe it. It just seemed so improbable that my favorite aunt would do something so horrible to me. I mean, wasn’t I her favorite nephew? Weren’t she and I always the ones who played practical jokes on everyone else in the family? Why would she betray me like this?

Then I smiled.

The beauty of this amazing practical joke hit me like a baseball bat to the brain. It was sheer genius. It was simple, practical and funny as hell. I had newfound respect for my aunt SuLu and I knew that she and the rest of my family were waiting for me to give them a reaction worthy of such a great joke. So, with my face red from embarrassment and shame, I looked over to my family and gave them what they wanted.

“Damn,” I said, “that was good.”

Then everyone laughed and made fun of me for the next few hours until we went to sleep. To this day everyone in my family still talks about my special ‘Christmas car’. My mother especially enjoys telling this story because more often than not, she was the butt of my aunt SuLu and my jokes. She’s very happy that I got my comeuppance and that she was there to witness it.

I’m just happy I didn’t break down and cry in the garage.

Now, although my family never did buy me a car when I was a teenager, a few years ago I bought one for my mother. A nice, brand new Infinity QX4. She loves her car very much and I’m really glad I bought it for her, since she’s a wonderful mother and deserves nothing but the best. However, nowadays when she gets me upset, nothing makes me happier than telling her I’m going to take away her toy until she apologizes.

Revenge can be so sweet.

~~Next time, Breakfast.

Everyone has a favorite Christmas memory and I’m no exception. The Christmas I’m going to tell you about is one that happened long ago in my youth and has since become part of the GeekMan family legend. It’s much funnier when I tell it in person, but you’ll just have to imagine for yourselves some of my facial expressions and intonations because… well, I’m not there to tell it, am I? I’ll introduce my family members as they come along in this story, but for right now let’s just dive right in and start off right after my arrival at my aunts house in Upstate New York.

This all takes place when I am roughly 16 years old.

We arrived in the early evening, about five or so, so it wasn’t yet time for dinner. My aunt and uncle, Miss Piggy and Kermit, we’re still in the kitchen cooking, so we had a couple of hours to kill before we ate. Since everyone in my family is a geek, we had a number of games to choose from to keep ourselves occupied. We didn’t have that long before dinner, so we decided that we would play a quick game of Pictionary.

Yessir, we’re a wild bunch alright.

In my family it’s a well known fact that my mother is the absolute worst Pictionary player in history of the world. She can’t draw, is horrible at giving clues and wouldn’t know how to cheat if her life depended on it.

Sweet, loveable, and utterly hopeless at board games pretty much sums up my mom.

No one wanted to have her on their team, so we would always go out of our way to try and convince her not to play. We’d tell her she looked tired, or that she should help out in the kitchen and sometimes we would even threaten to take away her presents if she didn’t stay away from the game.

It never worked, but we kept trying anyway.

For this particular game on this Christmas Eve the teams were split up like this;

Team 1

LuSu (mother of DeeDee and Princess)

Princess (my cousin, six months older than Fishman)

Fishman (my younger brother)

Zappy (my aunt SuLu’s ‘partner’)

Team 2

SuLu (my favorite aunt)

DeeDee (my other cousin, six months older than me)

Mom (my mother)

GeekMan (me)

There were other people there, but in their infinite wisdom, they decided not to play. Mr. Volkswagen, my mother’s boyfriend at the time, had already managed to have four gin & tonic’s in the 20 minutes between our arrival and the beginning of the game, so he was passed out in the basement couch. And Miss Piggy and Kermit were still cooking so they couldn’t play either.

As an aside, it must be noted that my aunt Miss Piggy made the absolute best Spanish rice in the history of the world. In fact, it was so good that during the entire night my mother and I stole all the little green olives from the pot. My aunt knew that my mother and I loved the olives, so she would always make the rice with extra olives just for us to pick out. Of course, that didn’t really help because my mother and I would eat all of them anyway, and there wouldn’t be any olives in the rice by the time dinner rolled around.

Wow, I’m drooling right now.

Anywaste, back to the game. My aunt, cousin and I knew that we were going to lose the game, so we decided to just have fun and let the inevitable happen. During the course of the game we all did the usual shtick people do during Pictionary. We drew stick figures, dollar signs, houses and a whole bunch of other things to help get our points across to our teammates. We all tried to cheat by making grunting noises or gesturing wildly at our teammates, and even with my mother on our team we were doing pretty well. So well in fact, that we were winning the game.

Then mom stepped up to the plate, looked at her card and frowned.

Now, we all knew she couldn’t draw but we still weren’t prepared for what we saw her doing to the drawing board. I’m sure that after her turn the board felt violated. Soiled. Raped. Strange shapes, symbols and wacky patterns appeared on the white paper as if my mother were vomiting black ink like the little girl in The Exorcist. One shape that caught everyone’s attention as soon as she drew it was something that could only be described as a large symbol of male genitalia.

And it was erect.

Basically, that brought the game to an end faster than if my grandmother had suddenly popped out of a cake, stripped naked and danced a jig on the kitchen table. No one knew what to say or do, so we all just looked at the board in an uncomfortable silence. Thankfully, god took pity on us and time ran out. When we all looked at my mother for an explanation, she gestured emphatically at the phallic symbol and said, ”It’s a bird!”

We snickered.

“Well, it is!”

Some giggling.

She pointed at some circles with little squiggles in them, “That’s a happy face!”

We laughed.

“Well, how the hell would you draw ‘The Bluebird of Happiness’?”

Eggnog was spewed from mouths and noses as we collapsed in gales of laughter.

After this we decided that Pictionary was probably not the best game to play. We then decided to try our hands at Monopoly. We set up the board and began playing. After about an hour, something caught my attention.

*sniff sniff*

GeekMan: “Anyone smell that?”

Zappy: “Smell what?”

DeeDee and Princess: “OH MY GOD!”

Mom: “Wow. Ugh. Ewww.”

Aunt SuLu: “Damn! That is foul!”

FishMan: “It smells like ass.”

GeekMan: “Like wide open ass.”

Fishman: “It smells like Mr. Volkswagon after eating burritos!”

SuLu: “But he’s downstairs.”

GeekMan: “Holy crap, it’s coming up through the floorboards!”

We then spent ten minutes screaming out as many rude and disgusting fart jokes at Mr. Volkswagon’s expense as we could. It was only then that we realized that my Aunt LuSu had been unnaturally quiet.

Too quiet.

Almost as one, we stopped laughing and looked in her direction. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and trying so hard to hold back her laughter that her face was redder than a baboons butt. She was shaking with suppressed giggles like a human-shaped Jello mold and tears were streaming down her face like tiny rivers of shame. When she realized that we knew, she opened up her mouth and managed to stutter four words.

“It juh… just puh… puh… popped out.”

Then she laughed so hard that she fell over backwards with her hands on her ankles and her legs still crossed. As her back hit the floor she let loose one of the loudest farts in the history of modern man. The smell traveled at the speed of light and hit us like an atomic bomb. Paint fell from the walls and small woodland animals outside dropped dead in their tracks. We all gagged and ran for the exits in the type of panic usually reserved for life-threatening emergencies involving sinking ships or re-runs of Alf or Punky Brewster.

I will never play board games with my family again. Ever.

~~ Next time, opening presents…