Questionably legal Christmas gifts
We had a strange theme for this year’s Christmas gifts. One gift looked like a bag of cocaine with a pre-rolled up bill for snorting. Another looked like half a pound of marijuana.
Neither was what it seemed.
Our European family who stays with us every year for a month or so gave us money to help buy a new washer since it’s breaking, and it’s something they’ve had to deal with in their stay here.
We told Christian and Yuki not to, but they were very kind and wanted to chip in anyway. So it’s a bag of powdered detergent in a sealed pouch with rolled up money inside.
At first, though, sitting around the Christmas tree and staring at an unwrapped bag of white powder, our reaction was, “What is this?” I suspect the granules are too big to be cocaine, but none of us in the house have any experience (or interest) in hard drugs, so this naieve couple was staring at the bag with puzzlement.
I thought it was baking powder since Claus and Olivia were on a baking spree and he was just complaining the powder was misplaced. Strange, still, that Christian and Yuki would give it in a Ziplock.
Where’s the rest of the can? Why did they buy a tin so big, it required doling it out in pieces? Did they, for some odd reason, split the cost of a massive Costco-sized can with someone else and this is their share that they’re gifting to us?
Christian said, rather unhelpfully, “There’s more inside!” So we moved the powder around with our fingers, with the bag still sealed, until the hard object came to the surface.
Rolled up dollar bills. This really still makes it look like drugs.
So finally, Yuki explains, “It’s money to buy a washer.”
AHA! A themed gift-wrap! Creative! And the most memorable gift of the season!
This was followed up by Claus’ gift to me of what looked like half a pound of weed in a glass clamp jar. It was herbs, and naturally, everyone knows from watching television that nobody puts marijuana in containers that large, so it was implausible from the get-go.
Still, it came on the heels of the Friis’ cocaine present, so I was still in the mindset of illegal substances.
So in the end, we will have properly seasoned food with clean laundry. And that’s merry enough of a Christmas for me.
