Formally Trained: Kind of Like "Twas the Night Before Christmas", Only, Y'Know, Not.

If you've seen the movie "A Christmas Story" (the venerable holiday cautionary tale about a kid, a BB Gun, and what happens when a tongue is stuck to a frozen pole), you know that every family has some hilarious holiday story that usually involves some crazy old person and/or a wild animal.

My family seems to have more than enough - there was the year when the organist at the stately presbyterian church was drunk off his ass, playing "Joy to the World" and "Go Tell it on the Mountain" in a minor key and refusing communion. We've gotten the giggles at inopportune times, had a specific Christmas party guest who showed up inebriated and in sweatpants and called told another guest she looked like a skunk, and most recently, the sweet Mormon carolers. But the best Christmas story to come out of our house involves a classic formula: One crazy old lady, an attic, and an animal.

Flashback to roughly 2001.
It's Christmas morning, and my mom, my brother and I were up relatively early, having our small family gift giving time. Our stockings were filled with the usual mix of obscure candy and toys from the Archie McPhee catalog. Things were going well. Finally, we started getting into the wrapped presents from our extended family.

The boxes from my grandmother were uncommonly large that year, and Kevin and I were excited. In retrospect, we should have known better, but we were young and optimistic. Had we taken a moment to think back to years prior , maybe we would have been a little more realistic, but Christmas morning has a way of sucking the realism out of most situations.

We tore into the wrapping paper gleefully, hoping that this year, our grandmother had actually visited a retail establishment for our gifts, rather than trolling her attic for yuletide booty.

Unfortunately, we were wrong. Very, very wrong.

What was contained in the packages was, well, interesting. Mom captured this look of surprise and delight:

Here was what was in the box:

Clockwise, we have: a random metal thing in a box, broken miniature telephone-shaped music box, a wax apple (wtf?), two Girl Scout glasses, an old bottle covered in wax, pig-shaped cream pitchers, "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Art", a sketchy vinyl cosmetics bag, an unidentified purple thing, the riveting pamphlet "Interesting Origins of English Words", and a toy hammock.

Also in the package was a...well, we weren't sure exactly what it was, but judging from mom's shrieks of horror, it was nothing good. It was blue, lumpy and made of papier mache. Mom grabbed it and explained that it was a skunk, the questionable result of her eighth grade art class. She also explained that she hated the thing, and was glad to finally have it in her possession so that it could be thrown away after years of captivity in my grandmother's attic.

A trash bag was produced, and mom made a big show of throwing the thing away.

And no sooner did our poor misshapen friend land with a thud at the bottom of the empty hefty bag, when the phone rang.

I shit you not, this is an exact transcript of the dialog:

Mom: Merry Christmas, Mom
Grandmother: Kim, DON'T YOU THROW THAT SKUNK AWAY!"

Frantic hand motions were made, the skunk was retrieved and given a name, and it's been a permanent fixture in our house ever since. My mom and my aunt take it on vacation with them every year. It's been present at major events, like my college graduation. It even gets decorated for special occasions and has a little paper car that it sits in when it moves from the fireplace.

Here it is today, looking extremely excited to have been rescued: