Christmas Day this year found me at the home of my dear sister Rose, who, as regular readers of this Web log know, owing to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the actions of people like Bernie Madoff, the schemes of scumbag derivative traders, the indifference of lying, thieving brokers, the mendacity of bogus “financial advisers” working for various corrupt Wall Street enterprises and the innate stupidity of American bankers, lives these days in somewhat reduced circumstances. Her house is in Fairfax, Virginia, a suburban Washington, DC locality that is generally quite bourgeois, and the home itself is actually rather spacious and very well accoutered. But at the moment, however, she shares it with her husband, Henry, Henry’s brother, Rose’s sister-in-law Shannon and both couples’ large collections of juvenile offspring. Think of a five bedroom house with (thanks to Hank Jr., who is now gone, on an art scholarship at Brown) a full garret living space over the garage – crammed full of kids in bunk beds – plus, God help us, a nursery. Both families are, like myself, Catholic; and unlike me, Rose, Shannon and both their husbands are all convinced that use of birth control amounts to a betrayal of important, deeply-held principles of religious faith. On the other hand, they all seem to enjoy sex so much, they find it impossible to restrain themselves from over-populating the planet. So, yes, counting the master bedroom (which is currently divided in half by a large bamboo screen bought at an eighty-three percent discount when the Pier One outlet closed at a nearby mall), the house has four and one-half baths. But trying booking a seat in one of them on a weekday morning between six and eight a.m., and you will see what I’m talking about. Fortunately, as we all know, large Catholic families are always filled with loads and loads of love – very fortunately, in fact, because if they weren’t, it’s a good bet the homicide rates in American bedroom communities these days would make the inner cities look comparatively safe.
Three of the four adults at Rose’s house remain employed and thus capable of contributing to the outrageous adjustable-rate mortgage payments necessary to keep a roof over everybody’s heads. However, once more, as regular readers know, poor Hank lost his job with Pabulex when the company went out of business earlier this year, and since then, aside from a brief, unsuccessful stint as a salesman with Microsoft, Hank has been, not to put too fine a point on it, unemployed.
At first, again, as regular readers know, Hank kept his situation a secret. He got up every morning, put on one of his thousand-dollar suits and drove his family’s newest SUV to, well, one or another of the many public libraries across the Potomac river in Maryland or the District of Columbia, so as to avoid being observed by anyone who might recognize him. There, where he would spend the day on the Internet and his cell phone or he might also kill a few hours stuffing envelopes with arduously constructed cover letters and carefully worded resumes on fancy cotton-stock cream-laid paper, desperately seeking suitable employment congruent with his background as an upscale infant and toddler products marketing executive. Sure, he signed up with all the six-figures-a-year professionals-only Web sites, and even paid a considerable sum to a local brick-and-mortar executive recruitment firm, all to no avail. Eventually, of course, Rose found out about where he was going every weekday morning. So these days, instead of pretending he’s still what he used to be, Hank just mopes around the house, stuffing envelopes with fancy paper resumes and applying on-line for any kind of job he thinks he can get. And it hasn’t been completely useless. He did get that job selling Microsoft, and even if he only lasted three weeks at it, they paid him, didn’t they? Furthermore, I am told that last month, he was hired to manage a retail children’s clothing outlet in an upscale mall over in Montgomery County, Maryland. But, after failing to find anyone to merge with it, the parent company went belly up, declared Chapter Seven bankruptcy and promptly ceased all operations, causing the outlet store to shut its doors and go dark a scant two days before Hank could start working there. Geepers, who could blame Hank for that?
As might be expected, having once been a big kahuna, Hank has faced some challenges adjusting to his role as a useless bum with no job. In years past, for example, it was customary at Hank’s office for him to drop a few well-placed hints which would cause either the most sycophantic or most insecure of his male underlings to volunteer for the role of Santa Claus at Hank’s house for purposes of entertaining Hank’s children on Christmas Eve. Hank always claimed that either the fellow was single and didn’t have a family of his own, or pointed out that Hank supplied the rental Santa suit and the guy could always use it to entertain his own kids, before or after discharging his duties at Hank’s house, of course.
This Christmas, though, nobody works for Hank. He wasn’t scheduled to write anyone’s annual performance review. Senior management was not going to solicit his input on appropriate salary and bonuses for anyone. He didn’t have any plummy, luxurious assignments involving travel to London, Paris, Tokyo or Milan to hand out; or, for that matter, exhausting and boring travel assignments to places like Des Moines or Houston, or stressful and dangerous travel assignments to places like Juarez or Manila to punish people with, either. He couldn’t determine where anyone would sit, what accounts they would work on, which product development teams they would coordinate on, or how much grueling, unpaid overtime they, as his staff of exempt employees, would have to put in during weekends and holidays. So Hank did what any unemployed corporate executive in his position would do – he hired a wino he had met at a District of Columbia Public Library to play Santa Claus for fifty bucks.
I wasn’t there to see it, though, because those events transpired on Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, I got an ear full from Rose right around half past eleven that night.
Rose: Tom, I swear to you, it was one of the most humiliating experiences of my entire life!
Tom: Oh, come on, it couldn’t possibly have been that bad…
Rose: What the hell do you know? You’re just my kid brother!
Tom: Okay, guilty as charged, but…
Rose: He came in, stinking of gin and cigarettes, with his red pants on backwards, his big gold belt buckle off to one side and his long, white false beard flecked with vomit!
Tom: Sounds like it must have been a pretty rough bus ride to your place.
Rose: That’s no excuse for such an egregious lack of professionalism!
Tom: But you just got through telling me the guy’s a professional wino.
Rose: Not tonight, not in front of my children – and Shannon’s children! Tonight, he was supposed to be a professional entertainer! He forgot the children’s names…
Tom: Come on, now, you can’t blame him for that. Even I can’t remember all their names.
Rose: He mumbled! He had spittle on his lips! He kept dropping the presents!
Tom: Okay, okay, maybe he was a bit low-rent compared to what the kids are used to, but why should that have made any difference, anyway? Little kids stink of Crayola and peanut butter, and they’re covered with a patina of sticky fruit juice residue, sweat and dirt that smells worse than cigarettes; they run around with their own pants on backwards, they produce copious spittle, and most of them can’t put a belt on straight themselves. What’s more, they run outside, intentionally get dizzy on the playground merry-go-round, then puke all over their clothes and blithely run back home for dinner, don’t they?
Rose: He used profanity in front of the children!
Tom: Probably nothing they haven’t already heard, I bet, when Shannon has a couple too many Old Bushmills and gets her Irish up.
Rose: [Expletive] [expletive]? [Expletive]? [Expletive] [expletive] [expletive]?
Tom: Damn! Really? That’s one salty Santa Claus, no doubt about it!
Rose: He pulled out a hip flask of Old Mr. Boston vodka and drank it – with a two-year-old on his lap!
Tom: Frankly, I think there are plenty of other adults who have held a two-year-old on their lap, wishing to Heaven for a hip flask of distilled spirits, although, I must admit, wishes being what they are, I doubt they are usually fantasizing about Old Mr. Boston brand vodka.
Rose: You’re missing the point! It… was… abominable! Disgraceful! But worse than that, Tom, and as an expert on early childhood development, I can assure you, it was gravely… and acutely… traumatizing!
Tom: Which means?
Rose: That if something isn’t done to reverse it, immediately, those children will develop reactive psychological states; and you know what that means!
Tom: They’ll make up imaginary friends?
Rose: No, it means they’ll start having nightmares, wetting the bed, drawing disturbing pictures on the walls, and falling behind in their standardized achievement tests!
Tom: All right, you’ve convinced me, this is serious. My sincerest commiseration. So what else is new?
Rose: Not so fast, little brother, because there happens to be a way all this terrible damage can be remediated.
Tom: Hold on now, Rose, just wait a minute here…
Rose: Tom, please, you’ve got to help. Your family needs you.
As so it was, that I showed up at Rose’s house at the crack of dawn yesterday, wearing a Santa Claus suit, and gazing into a sea of tiny, red-rimmed, sleepless little eyes who stared back at me from amid piles of ribbon, empty boxes, wrapping paper and toys.
“Ho, ho, ho,” I told them, “I bet you didn’t know Santa has bipolar disorder, now did you?” Their little jaws dropped as I elaborated on the cover story Rose had concocted: “That’s right, children,” I pretended to explain, exhibiting a vitamin C capsule and an aspirin tablet in my extended right hand palm, “as long as I take my meds, old Santa’s his usual jolly, normal self. But wouldn’t you know,” I continued as Rose handed me a glass of water and I swallowed the aspirin and vitamin C, “I was so busy at the North Pole this year, I forgot!”
Having been raised around adults who pop pills for various and sundry reasons all over the place, not to mention observing how those adults behave; and being well aware of the fact that they, or another kid they know has to take some kind of medication to control their behavior, the little tykes had no problem believing that this was, indeed, the Santa whom they had met last night, as well as the Santa who visited them last Christmas, and, for that matter, all the Christmas Eves before. It made perfect sense to them, really. In their world, adults are usually nice and affectionate, then, without warning, they start acting like raving lunatics; and the explanation is always the same – they had stopped taking their meds, that’s all, or, occasionally, as with Ambien, taken meds that got mixed up with their other meds and made them, for example, loot their neighbors’ houses for the kids’ Christmas presents. Many of them, no doubt, remembered when, during Christmas, 2006, one of Hank’s sisters, Aunt Elizabeth, gave them Brunswick bowling balls, Head skis, TAG Heuer watches, HP wi-fi lap tops with porno Web site links, designer fireplace sets, Wilson carbon-fiber tennis racquets, somewhat used size-twelve Nike athletic shoes, and odd, soft, pliable plastic and rubber objects of no apparent use to a child. And what was the problem then? Why, meds, of course – that’s what Mommy and Daddy said. Big props and shouts out to Rose for being so incredibly clever. Her ruse worked like a charm.
And, consequently, I was Santa, ho, ho, ho-ing, laughing that big, Santa laugh, holding onto my fake jelly belly and shaking it up and down for all it was worth (which is $79.95 at Costumes Creative in Silver Spring, but only $6.50 per day rental. Rose had stayed up all night, completely and immaculately cleaning, deodorizing and rejuvenating the Santa suit and all the accessories Hank had rented for the wino to wear). Since it was Christmas Day, the kids thanked me for their presents, for the most part, anyway. I can’t say there weren’t a few complaints. It seems that Santa didn’t make quite as many zhu pets as he should have, for example. Generally, however, the children experienced a very wholesome, uplifting and healing time with Santa, who made sure to apologize several times for how he had behaved on Christmas Eve. Then, after Santa ho-ho-ho’ed his way out the front door to the delighted departing cries of Rose’s and Shannon’s younger children (and as the older ones stood around smirking knowingly), Rose came on to instruct them with respect to the important moral lessons of personal responsibility, restraint, obedience and forgiveness demonstrated by Santa’s sincere contrition after commission of venial sin.
This Santa, meanwhile, was in the garage, changing out of his costume and into his street clothes, stopping, I might add, for a nice, long swig from his own hip flask – solid sterling silver and filled to the lip with Remy Martin XO. Well, it is the holidays, isn’t it? No sooner did I finish swallowing, though, than my cell phone rang. It was Kuttakameena Chinaalkagaandu, or “Kenny,” as he likes to be called, chief policy analyst for the Indian Trade and Commerce Ministry. He’s a very regular client.
Kenny: I am so sorry to bother you, Tom; it’s Christmas Day there in Washington, I know, but here in Mumbai, it’s just another Friday afternoon; and I am most definitely beside myself, in a quandary and on the horns of a dilemma, so to speak, at the moment, you understand, concerning an issue of the highest importance!
Tom: Cross-cultural awareness is an indespensible part of my work, Kenny. Besides, I assume it must be pretty urgent for you to be calling me so early on Christmas Day. What can I do for you?
Kenny: You can explain to me what is the matter with people today, that they can’t keep from playing around with that Facebook at the office all day instead of working!
Tom: Well, Americans are known for being kind of dumb, lazy and easily distracted. It’s hardly surprising that you’d find them goofing off at work with something like Facebook.
Kenny: Yes, yes, but it’s not the Americans about whom I am speaking, Tom! It is the Indians! The Indian Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry…
Tom: You mean, Assocham?
Kenny: Yes, yes, most definitely, them! They have released a study which indicates that fooling around with Facebook has decreased Indian industrial productivity by over twelve percent! Think about it, Tom – twelve percent of all the software development outsourcing, twelve percent of all the customer assistance help desk support, twelve percent of all the manufacturing output of an entire subcontinent, has disappeared because of this asinine social networking site!
Tom: All social networking sites are asinine.
Kenny: Who am I to disagree with that? MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, you name it! But eighty-three percent of the office workers polled say they don’t see anything wrong with it!
Tom: So what is wrong with it?
Kenny: I will tell you what’s wrong with it – the damn things suck all the money right out of the bottom line. What’s twelve percent of productivity can be anywhere between twenty-five and seventy-five percent of profits!
Tom: Well, it’s not surprising they don’t think there’s anything wrong with it – addicts are always in denial.
Kenny: You mean, Facebook and those other sites are turning Indian workers into Internet addicts?
Tom: The report, if you recall, says that over eighty percent of Indian Internet users are already social networking addicts.
Kenny: Oh, yes, now that you mention it, that is indeed what it says. What is this, some kind of American plot?
Tom: Excuse me?
Kenny: You Americans invented computers, yes?
Tom: Actually, we Americans can’t take credit for that. We invented the transistor and the integrated circuit, which made it possible for computing to become ubiquitous and inexpensive.
Kenny: Say what you want, then, didn’t you invent the Internet?
Tom: Alas, yes, an American named Al Gore, who later became Vice President of the United States, invented the Internet, as every school child knows.
Kenny: And is not the World Wide Web an American invention?
Tom: Well, no, not really. Without the Internet Browser application, there would be no World Wide Web, and the Internet Browser was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN, in Switzerland.
Kenny: Okay, then, make that a Western conspiracy directed by the United States! So tell me now, what about these “social networking” World Wide Web sites? Are you prepared to deny that you Americans cooked them up in order to (a) get the educated, intelligent, technologically-oriented young people of the world totally indoctrinated into Western-slash-American culture?
Tom: Excuse me, then, because the United States of America has no culture. We went directly from barbarism to decadence without the slightest interval of culture in between.
Kenny: Don’t start splitting hairs with me, Tom Collins! I say, (b) did not America get the best, brightest and most promising young adults in the developing countries to sign up for American-invented social networking sites?
Tom: Okay, yeah, I’ll cop to that – all the major social networking sites on the Web were invented in America. But you have to understand, they were invented by young, innocent Americans who were mistakenly raised with a misguided emphasis on their self esteem, which, unfortunately, culminated, among a few of them, in the idea that social networking Web sites are a good idea.
Kenny: Really? Very well, then, Tom, my friend; then how about, (c) constructing those Web sites such that they make cyber-addicts out of our office work force, thus crippling our emerging economies!
Tom: Nice try, Kenny, but there’s no way you can blame that on the Americans.
Kenny: You’re sure?
Tom: I know how disappointed you must be, Kenny, but no, that’s not anyone’s fault but your own.
Kenny: Okay, assume that is our fault, our flaw, our problem, then what do you suggest?
Tom: Nothing. It’s incurable.
Kenny: What? Are you kidding me, Tom Collins? The difference between cyber-addiction impacts on productivity between the United States and India was the only thing that justified outsourcing in the first place!
Tom: Ah, yeah, and from the very beginning, I am sure you will admit, both of us have realized that.
Kenny: Uh… um… er… yes, maybe so, but…
Tom: Gimme a break, Kenny, all you have to do is impose a million rupee fine on anyone caught accessing social networking sites while on the job. With apologies to Henry Ross Perot, “It’s just that simple.”
Kenny: I beg your pardon, Tom, but you and I both know there is absolutely nothing simple about imposing huge fines on people who use an industry computer system to entertain themselves.
Tom: What the ding-blasted humperdinck are you talking about? Here in America, anybody who uses an industry computer system to entertain themselves gets fired, that’s what!
Kenny: So we should do that in India?
Tom: No, don’t even bother. You see, Kenny, the great foreign outsourcing gold mine is about to give out.
Kenny: Huh?
Tom: This is it, Kenny, the tip of the iceberg. India’s attempts to steal rightfully-earned American wealth are on the verge of being totally thwarted and overthrown. It’s been a long, disgusting pattern, really – the British exploiting us, the French cheating us, the Japanese imitating us, the Chinese using slave labor to out-produce us, but all that’s history now. India was just the last one in line, that’s all. Tell you what – hang up now, and I won’t bill you.
Kenny: Sounds fair enough. Good morning, Tom.
Tom: And good evening to you, sir.