Sunday, December 21, 2014

A Christmas Past

I am a freshman in college, thousands of miles from my family, feeling all alone in a tiny town in upstate New York. A high school buddy of my dad's is the principal of the local school, though, and sometimes I babysit for his three children. On this December night, after the kids are in bed, rather than study for exams as I should, I snap on the TV. Sitting in a family living room rather than surrounded by the cinder block walls of my dorm room seems so normal, that I can't resist. I don't need to turn the knob far to find what I want to watch-- John Denver and the Muppets are in the middle of a corny version of The Twelve Days of Christmas, and for the next hour Home seems a little closer.

When it's time to go home in a couple of weeks, I bring the soundtrack album with me, and over the next thirty-five years it becomes a family classic in all its goofy, sappy splendor, but the show itself is lost, never released to be viewed again...

Until tonight, that is. Last year I ordered a bootleg copy from some sketchy internet pirate, and although it didn't arrive in time for Christmas then, I have it now, and true it's blurry and quite dated, but I am not disappointed.

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