Death By Christmas Robot

There are certain things that are a standard part of the christmas holiday. These things can vary from person to person and may even change over time. Decorating the christmas tree, stringing lights on the house, baking christmas cookies, eating christmas cookies, listening to old christmas music, etc.

Some standards are regional, for instance I grew up in a small town in south Arkansas. Each year in El Dorado the local television station KTVE would sting lights from it’s TV tower that when lit would appear to be a giant christmas tree that could be seen from many many miles away. Every year our family would all pile in the car to drive under the giant christmas tree. As a teeneager I figured out a way to get to the roof of the TV station which gave me access to the tower. I climbed up the tower with my video camera and filmed cars driving under the tree and the city thru the lights of the tree. The next year my friends and I staged operation “lights out on christmas” in which we may or may not have developed a plan to pull the plug on the entire GIANT christmas tree. If such a plan did exist and was implemented it would have involved some climbing, a planned escape path thru backyards over fences and a get-away car. I can neither confirm nor deny this.

Another one of my christmas standards as a child was the church christmas play. Every year…...every single year….no matter who died….no matter if the entire town was in quarantine from an outbreak of rabid fleas, the show must go on! In fact my mother who was always the director is on this very day in the middle of yet another church christmas play. She surely should get an award for longest running director of the church christmas play. Somebody give that lady an award.

So if you’ve never had the privilege of being a part of a christmas play in a small church in a small town then you would never know that shepherds in the bible wore bath towels on their heads, or that if you need some palm trees you only need to dumpster dive the local carpet store because palm trees are actually made of the cardboard core of carpet rolls. You then have probably never heard a narrator nervously reading the christmas story and in all of his country back woods draw say “and there they found the little baby Jesus wrapped in SWAPPING clothes and lying in the MANAGER!”….not manger….manAger!

But not all plays involve shepherds, palm trees and manAgers.

When I was about 10 or 11 years old the theme of the play was telling the christmas story thru the eyes of toys in a toy shop who came to life on the stage. By this time I was pretty aggressive about which part I wanted and then working my tail off to memorize the lines to ensure I landed the part. (I received no special treatment from the director)

That year I had my eyes set on the toy robot. I nailed the auditions, as I had perfected not only the lines but I spoke them with a nice robot mono-tone. I was awarded the part. I convinced the director to let me design and fabricate my own costume. It was over the top and would definitely make this years play bump up a couple notches on the cool scale.

Here is how I made my epic costume. 1 box slightly larger than my head wrapped in alluminum foil, 1 large box also wrapped in foil with a hole in the bottom that fits over my head and rest on my shoulders covering my body down to my knees, four of those cardboard tubes from the carpet rolls for my arms and legs. And then to top it all off I figured it would be cool to have the front of the robots chest have lights that blink just like a real robot. I would poke holes in the box and push about 10 lights thru to create the effect. The only multi colored blinking lights I could find was a strand of 100 christmas lights, but I only needed 10 so I decided I’d take the other 90 lights and just tape them to my chest and then cover them with a black shirt. Brilliant!

So the show begins and all is going great I’m killing it with my robot vocals and I’m feeling great. But about 20 mins into this hour and half show I begin to get really really hot! 90 lights strapped to your chest covered by a shirt and then covered by a box covered in alluminum foil is like…well it's like an OVEN! I had created an oven and then put myself inside to cook. And to make matters worse I couldn’t bend my arms or my legs because they were constrained by the rigid cardboard tubes. The circulation was being cut off of both my legs and arms….I couldn’t feel my toes or fingers and my head is in a small box that only has 3 small holes and 1 large whole. The large hole is connected to the inferno of hell below!! So I’m getting almost ZERO fresh air. After 45 mins I realize I’m not gonna make it to the end of this horrible story. I thought “I must get air….I must get air!”  But I couldn’t move my arms to remove the box from my head….I was just gonna die in this robot oven. Then as if my processor was rebooted I suddenly had a plan, I could bend my hips a little and if I bent over enough I might could get this box off of my head. I began bending over and at the same time I started violently shaking my head back and forth. It took a couple of tries but finally the box went flying across the stage! 

FREE…..FREE….I breathed in that fresh air like a boy saved from a burning furnace robot. I was gonna be ok….I was gonna live! And that’s when I saw Raggedy Anne had hopped up and fetched my head from across the stage…..and while singing “Go Tell it on the Mountain!” she made her way over to me. She was bringing my head back and was about to lock me back into this robot prison! I started screaming from the top of my lungs “NOOOOO Don’t put that back on my head!!! NOOOOO!” but my voice was drowned out by the choirs of angels singing “Go Tell IT!!”

From the audiences perspective they were probably thinking "Wow this play has many cool nuances...the robot is so excited about the birth of Jesus that his head pops off, and just like Jesus little Raggedy Ann restored him."

I immediately bent over again and violently shook my head until the box came flying off again. And again I breathed the fresh air….but again to my dismay faithful Raggedy Ann retrieved my head and plopped it right back down over my face as I’m screaming “NOOOOOOO I can’t breathe!!!!”

The third time I ejected my head my parents realized that something was wrong and began sprinting to the stage just in time for me to turn to a very large potted tree and there I puked all the complementary cookies and koolaid I had just consumed proir to the show.

So every year when I crack open the christmas lights I hear in my ear a little robot saying "MUST GET AIR!!"