The Christmas Card Incident

by Steve

My wife goes to a lot of trouble every year to make our Christmas cards. They’re very important to her. It’s always a Christmassy picture of our kids. She likes that everyone we don’t get a chance to see, can have them as a sort of record of how our children are growing up. The cards are very important to her.

The actual taking of the picture is a nightmarish scene, at which, my presence is forbidden. Apparently, I can’t seem to offer anything constructive. The other thing that is always absent from the photo shoot is any sort of cooperation from my kids. During the taking of the photo, threats and bribes are thrown about like half-truths on Fox News. My son earns a tidy 10 cents per camera click. All I have to do is get them into the mailbox. The cards are very important to her.

Our post office has 2 old mailboxes painted up all nice for the holiday and the kids love to put the cards in one at a time. It takes forever with 50 cards each, but they have fun.

About halfway into it, I spotted one card in my son’s pile that had no stamp and I snagged it just in time.
“What are you doing?” he snapped.
“Looks like your mother forgot to put a stamp on this one.”
“Oh.”
“Well, she forgot to put a stamp on this one too,” my daughter said.
“Let me see.” I took her pile and as I flipped through, I got a sinking feeling. There were no stamps on any of them.
My son was now jamming in 5 at a time. No stamps.
Right about then I remembered, in my wife’s voice, “They aren’t stamped yet, try to get Christmas stamps.”
Cold sweat… nausea… etc…
They wouldn’t open the mailbox to retrieve them. USPS policy: “Once we’ve got it, it has to go through the process.”
I saved 20 of them.

In the car on the way home, I kept repeating, “Your mother is going to kill me.” The kids have never seen me like this. Scared out of my mind and all. Then my son asked, “What are you going to tell mom?”

Hmmmm, what was I going to tell mom? She’s at work all day. I could let the 80 cards come back to my mailbox, stamp them and get them right back out. They’d arrive late, but how would she ever know? I could get away with this. Pre-children, this is exactly what would have happened. And this is exactly what I wanted to do. So children haven’t exactly made me a better person. But, they have made me at least pretend to be a better person.
So, I told them, “Well, I’m going to tell her the truth of course.” Then I went on and on like I always do, “I did it… blah, blah… responsibility… blah, blah…”
So, when my wife got home (to a clean house and a rib-eye steak) I got everyone together and I just told her. I told her all in one breath, “accident…sorry… accident… so sorry… I’ll fix it.”
She could see the fear, and, I guess, how intently the kids were watching. She sort of smiled, and said “OK.”
Oddly enough, I was uneasy with, “OK.” What about the whole responsibility thing I was trying to demonstrate? How are my kids supposed to watch me take my lumps like a man if she doesn’t freak out? Then it hit me. Ohhhhhh. She’s their example too. Nice one hun!
“What!?” My son said. “That’s it?” I think he was expecting blood (way to have my back pal).
“It was an accident,” she said, “I’m upset (a glare at me) but I’m not going to get mad over an accident. He’ll fix it (another glare at me).”
We got 28 cards back, stamped them and sent them back out. I don’t know what my kids took from this, or what happened to the rest of the cards.