The Gift That Keeps On Frustrating

My brother and I have a rather odd sense of humor at times. As all brothers do, we constantly find ways to pick at each other, to frustrate each other, to embarrass each other, you get the idea. Our challenge is to find new and exciting ways to accomplish this goal.

One of the more ingenious ways this was attempted started 10 years ago. It was Christmas, and we had all gathered at my parents house for the traditional changing of the soon-to-be-returned gifts. My brother purposely held off giving me my last item until everyone had opened all of their gifts. Of course this was for dramatic effect, and to make sure he had everyone's attention. So he says, "oh yeah, I forgot, this is yours too," and hands me this last item. I open it to find an old Almaden wine bottle, now empty, with nothing but a gift certificate inside. Now, I'm not sure if you know what those old Almaden wine bottles look like, but you can get a glimpse of it at the Glass Packing Institute web site. The bottle is somewhat bell shaped with an extremely narrow neck. As a matter of fact, this neck is so narrow that you can fit a dime inside, but not a penny. Yeah, now you get the picture.

Well, we had a good laugh about it, and everyone thought I would take the bottle home, shatter it, and grab the gift certificate and be done with it. Oh no, not me. With a friend's help, we managed to fish that son of a bitch out of the bottle without causing any harm to the container. The next year, as Christmas once again approached, I dug the bottle out of storage and proceeded to fill it with golf tees. Again, with the neck so narrow, only one tee will fit down it at a time. And I packed that sucker full. I don't remember now, but there were at least 200 tees inside. I carefully wrapped the bottle back up and presented it to him at the gathering. Of course, I made sure it was the last present opened. Let me tell ya, it was B-E-A-utiful. The expression on his face when he saw it was priceless. First he sees this bottle filled with the golf tees, then it slowly dawns on him that this is the same bottle he gave me the year before. Check and Mate.

Well, I didn't know it at the time, but these two events started a tradition. Every year since, that bottle has gone back and forth between us. It has been filled with things you couldn't even imagine. After about the third year, we made a few ground rules for it. 1) you cannot fill it with anything nasty. No one wants to ruin Christmas, and finding that bottle filled with dog shit, or something equally as vile just wouldn't be a good time. And 2) you cannot fill the bottle with anything that by nature is impossible to remove. This prevents either of us with filling it with cement or foam insulation that hardens when dry. This also gives us some reasonable chance to get the other one back. You can make it difficult to remove, but not impossible.

Some of the things that have made it into the bottle: shredded money from the Federal Reserve, along with a few real bills stuffed into it, just so you won't drop a match into the bottle and burn out the shredded money; filled with nuts, bolts, screws, etc, with a few really difficult pieces like suction cups, magnets and toggle bolts; sample packets of Tagamet and Pepcid; jelly candy and gummi bears, slightly heated to make them stickier; the insides of fortune cookies...hundreds of them. Are you getting the picture people?

A lot of our friends know about this by now. As I said, this started 10 years ago. I have people every year now asking me after the holiday "what was in the bottle this year?" Or before Christmas gets here, they ask, "Who has the bottle?" And every year it gets harder and harder to come up with something new to fill it with. Unfortunately, I have the bottle this year. I have only 20 days left to come up with something to fill that sucker with. At some point now, almost every day, the thought of that bottle will cross my mind. Tonight, I may have finally came up with a couple of ideas. Now I just have to figure out if either of them are practical. And if not, come up with something else. In a hurry.

Be careful in your actions, people, because you never know what is going to catch on and haunt you for the rest of your life. Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays. Every other Christmas is now even more special, because I know that after I get that bottle filled, I won't have to think about it for another 2 years. It's his problem next year.

~peace out