holiday anecdote

Something I wrote back in December after arriving home from China, probably late into a timeless night for me as I lay awake, jetlagged:

Walking through Jewel-Osco in tandem around 10pm, Dave and I were dressed to the T, both wearing nice suits and looking sharp as a razor. Down the alcohol aisle we plunged like Draino through a plugged sink and we came out of there with a Crown Royal gift set that included two glasses, one for me and one for him.

Looked too nice to be carded at the cash register and went back to his house with the intention of drinking whiskey sours and watching “Leprechaun 3 in Las Vegas,” but much to our chagrin, the DVD (part of a Leprechaun 1-3 set I had given Dave for Christmas) was bunk, or rather it didn’t work in U.S. region DVD players. I think its proper region code was the one corresponding to Germany. I bought the DVD set in China on my second to last day there. I went to the DVD shop across the university campus, but I was not familiar with this particular one. I came across, first, the “Sleepaway Camp” series, 1 through 3, which would be perfect gift for Seth. So I pulled that out of the stack and set it aside. Then, less than 10 seconds later I came across the Leprechaun series which was the perfect gift for Dave. Just as the two are next-door neighbors in real life, so the gifts I would get for them this holiday season were nearly beside one another as well.