This Christmas I'm supposed to take a break from talking about the sheer ridiculousness of celebrating a Christian holiday by putting a shrine to Santa Claus covered in idols surrounded by the fruit of your labor in your most important and focal place of your home. I'm supposed to take a break from pointing out the mass murders made in the name of God. Also, I'm supposed to resist pointing out that if Jesus, his father, and the holy spirit are one god, then Jesus was his own father. Most of all I'm supposed to give something to my parents that they don't have already.

Pay it forward wasn't just a movie with Kevin Spacey. It was something my parents lived. This isn't an easily accomplished task, considering my limited income and the fact that they've bought basically everything I can't, plus what I can. So my siblings and I decided to provide for my parents something that money can't buy. We got them a few kind words.

So I'm sitting on the pot like dad after work, only with the door closed, and I'm writing about my parents. "What they mean to me in a page and a half" or something like that. It's a task that I haven't really undertaken very often, unless you count my sessions with a therapist, then it's probably many times. But this isn't supposed to be like those ones. For one, I haven't been coached on what to say. For two, I haven't needed individual counseling for a while. So I guess this will be kind of like counseling only I'm not supposed to mention things like the fact that I went to counseling…but it's too late for that. This is about ignoring the "bad" things that have happened and remembering the good times we've had. 

Luckily, I can joke about the bad times because I know that I had a lot more good times with my parents than bad. For every time I saw Mom over the wash basin scrubbing a pair of underwear muttering swears under her breath, there were probably four thousand hugs. For every time I walked down the hallway only to be knocked to the floor by a wall of stink, there were fifty school projects that Dad destroyed the competition with. Actually there were more farts than projects, but that's neither here nor there.

The truth is, Mom and Dad have loved me more than I could ever hope to return. Pay it forward wasn't just a movie with Kevin Spacey. It was something my parents lived. They knew that I was selfish and would only be able to pay them back by loving my future selfish children as much as they loved me, the ungrateful little bastards.

So my hope for the future is to show my children how much my parents loved me, and I will understand when they joke about the times when I farted while wrenching on their car, or broke down before a family vacation, and I'll know that it's only a matter of time before they'll get what's coming to them.

Alright, my leg is falling asleep and I really need to wipe, so it's time to end this.

I love you, Mom and Dad. Merry Christmas.

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