All I want for Christmas

That time of the year has managed to sneak up on me once again. I managed to escape the fateful question until last week when Hannah asked me, "so what do you want for Christmas?" I hadn't yet thought about what this year's answer to that question would be but as I was on stage at the time and couldn't afford to stand there looking stumped, I came up with, "I want one show where I don't mess up." She told me that I would get my wish that very day. She was spectacularly wrong.
Why is it that I should have to make up some silly wish list every year just because nobody believes the truth when I tell them? Seriously, there isn't anything in particular I want to get. All I want is to spend some time with people I care about and maybe eat lots of food. When I tell people that's what I want, the reply is always, "OK, but what do you want to get? What do you want to unwrap?" Nothing. Some people go shopping and everything they see they want to have. When I go shopping, I find it difficult to find anything that resonates.
So I usually make up some absurd wish list. One year, that got me into a spot of trouble though. Someone wouldn't stop bothering me about it, so I turned to her and told her I wanted a wife for Christmas. Unfortunately, a third party overheard this and volunteered for the job. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice stated the obvious - well Rue, once more you've created the makings of some good old-fashioned trouble. If anyone knows how girls are when left among their own little clubs, it can be understood how within a few days there was suddenly a whole fleet of girls planning a ceremony. Oh yes, that seed of concern that had been planted when she burst out, "I'll marry you!" was now in full bloom. They were going to get the chaplain to perform a ceremony in the chapel right after the end of exams. Yes, I believe he would have done it too - after all, he did perform a wedding for two dogs... Fortunately as I recall it was weather, and revised schedules that rendered the appointment untenable.
Unfortunately, this gave the girlies more time to get even more creative and elaborate with a revised date. Now, I'm not one to habitually cower from embarrassingly silly situations, but I had a problem. Marriage was and is a pretty serious thing to me, moreover giving vows. I didn't want to get into a situation where I was gang-pressed into giving and receiving vows that neither of us intended to keep. I tried to explain in a sensitive manner that it really wasn't personal when I called it off, and she said she completely agreed. Turns out she was pretty hurt by that and didn't understand at all.
Somehow we still became pretty good friends a good while later, but still today she says she can't understand my unease with the direction her friends had taken it.
Moral of the story: don't say you want something absurd if any attempts to grant it can lead to compromising situations.
So this year I will not be flippant; I'll just tell it as it is, take it or leave it. I don't want anything that comes in a box. Just give me a smile or a friendly word. Of course, if anyone could explain my life to me, that would be alright by me too. That would be alright...