Istanbul

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Marriage is a funny thing to watch after the couple has been together for over twenty years. Shame is eliminated, and aspects of jealousy turn into products of hilarity. 

This is highly the case with my parents. They have been married for over twenty-two years now, me being the product of their sensational honeymoon. I can recall one recent night when From Russia with Love was on the television, and after a copious amount of intimate scenes, my mother thought it necessary to reflect on one of her marriage proposals.

James Bond had happened to be in Istanbul, and that kicked off my mother's story. 
"He promised to take me to Istanbul as a honeymoon. He said that if I accepted his hand in marriage we would leave right away."
My father was quick to inquire before my sister and I. It was as though his ears perked up at the sound of this treachery. "Who?"
My mother laughed to herself. "You wouldn't know him if I said his name!"
He tried again, this time a little more frustrated than the last. "Who is it?"
My mother gave up and surrendered to my father this mysterious man's name. "Josef."
"Josef?" my father erupted into laughter. "Josef! Josef backwards is fart, 'fes-we' in Lebanese, means fart! You were proposed to by a fart?"

My mother laughed. "The power of jealousy!" she exclaimed, "you are so jealous!"
"I'm not jealous!" replied he. "At least my name isn't fart! Go to Istanbul with fart, I don't care!"

It is interesting how despite the lengths you make in life, your past always lurks in your subconscious. Your past always has a way inside your current life - if you are smart, though, you laugh your past off and leave it hanging around in Istanbul, awaiting your arrival that will never come because you are far better off in Melbourne, Australia, honeymoon-less and farting along with and on your spouse as the rest of your family members crawl off into the distance, suffocating.

Sleeping In

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It is a fact in most cases that a child takes after her or his family and their habitual activities which range from eating to sleeping. Apart from eating, sleeping patterns in my family have heavily influenced me. 

It was Sunday morning. I was awakened due to my bowel movements. It pestered with me at 7:30am, so I got out of bed and tended to its needs. The house was unusually quiet. I bumped into my mother who also happened to be awake due to her bowel movements - perhaps another habitual family trait that we share - and upon inquiring into why the shop has not yet opened, she notified me that it would in an hour. My father opens the shop late on Sundays so as to acquire some more sleep. She asked whether I was up for the purpose of homework or not, then went back to sleep. The house was then terribly quiet yet softly alive with the sounds of snores. 

We are like a little community. Rather, a little herd. A rebellious little herd. In fact, if we had been a herd, we would be the type of herd that hogs the drinking area excessively due to being so full that we cannot move. We would lay there immobile after a large meal and a large drink of fresh water to suit, out of scheduled hours, so long that we would annoy all of the other herds and be exiled from the land which we would have once called home.

Alas, we are not a herd. We are a quadrant, we are a group of lazy humans who share a passion for food, movies and sleep. We would prefer waking up late each day and on the days where we must wake up early, share the hatred of having to do so. Parting with our beds is no simple task, yet we push on. We do not actively support each other, yet we passively are there for one another in our supportive actions. Or lack of, when it comes to the acquisition of sleep.

How then, can one break free from a habit such as sleeping in when every person that is surrounding that one shares that habit? Families frame who we are, and since I am a lazy person, preferring chocolate over the company of others, who has a pale complexion from avoiding the sun and enough weight to remain warm without heaters and who enjoys sleeping in, then I suppose you are acquainted with my family too.

Daddy Daughter Dance Off

As of late, numerous amounts of father and daughter singing and dancing videos have surfaced on the internet and have gone viral. It is a delight to see these videos because of the captivating collaborations that they are, yet there is one thing that will never leave me.

And that is my disconnectedness with my own father. My family is not a broken one, nor is it more than a little dysfunctional. My parents have always supported me in my academic endeavours alone and I am rather grateful for that. But one essential thing that I am missing is the failure to forge the broken link between my father and I, and I am afraid that it is something that has always been there, that will always be there, and that will always be irreparable.  

Seeing these videos make me feel rather jealous. I am jealous not of the amazing skills portrayed but of the connection I see and feel that I lack. I both admire and envy the videos of this type that I come across. If I had had that connection with my father, I think things would be a lot different for me. I think that all of the general 'boy' knowledge that he has on hold would have been mine - he abides by gender constraints and therefore has not ever taught me the basic tricks of the mechanics of cars, nor has he taught me the basics of fishing, or anything else that exists outside of our household. 

I am sorry for my father for not being able to liberate himself from the gender constraints which bind his thought processes. I remember distinctly one time when my mother told me about why he does not help her with any housework. Back in Lebanon, he once was washing the dishes for her when one of his friends walked past the window and yelled a derogatory term at him which is along the lines of the excessive loss of masculinity due to partaking in 'a female's activity'. "Ever since that moment," my mother told me, "he has not helped me." 

His own father is partially to blame for this. My grandfather is the epitome of what makes an 'absent father'. He has been throwing away his money his entire life on gambling, and he has never learnt his lesson. To this day, he watches horse racing channels on full volume, and zones out of the world so as to focus on yet another loss. To this day, he walks into the nearest Tattslotto agency and revels in every two-dollar winning after spending hundreds to acquire that little winning, though I would hardly consider it a 'winning' in the first place. When my father was younger, my grandfather would take him to the horse races and on several occasions he would lose him and not care.

In fact, the main reason as to why my family emigrated from Lebanon to Australia is because of my grandfather's debt to various people. He had borrowed so much money to place bets back in Lebanon that he had to flee along with his family due to his inability to pay it all back, otherwise he would have had to pay with his life. One would think that that would have taught him to perform otherwise, but one is heavily mistaken. 

I suppose it pains me moreso that my father had not learnt from the absence of his own. It pains me how despite my efforts he has not improved all that much, and how I have to find and watch videos such as the one above to feel some sort of feeling that most daughters all over the world feel, to pretend that I have such relationship with my own father. It pains me but it teaches me how not to treat my future children. Count your blessings, right?

Friday Nights

She has just spent the entire day shopping for tonight. She has picked out a nice, glittery dress, one that will reveal most of her body instead of cover it up in this cold time – it is okay, she convinced herself that a few star jumps will do the trick. She picked out a nice, tall pair of high heels in fluorescent green to suit her lack of clothing, and had just been to the hairdresser who licked her hair so straight that no spillage of drinks will affect her later tonight.

She then came home and applied some fake tan to her body just in case she had to take her clothes off later, and immediately put on her dress and heels because she cannot wait to head back out dressed in them. She then looked at herself in the mirror – fantastic! She bent down, pulled open the drawer fatigued with the weight of cosmetic products, and began to layer varied creams and powders to acquire a complexity decent enough for photographs. After all, many boys will see these later on for months, so if she does not score tonight which is doubtful, she will keep scoring for weeks after.

She had no time to have her nails done. Rather, Vanessa’s Nail Art did not have any appointments. She never went anywhere else. So she purchased a packed of fake nails before she was home to apply herself. After all, her slender arms did not want to be seen by her side if they had not had any fake nails attached to them. She checked her phone – thirteen texts, four missed calls and some new Snapchats. She was tagged in a Facebook post, it turns out her friends could not wait for her any longer, so they left without her. She was to meet them at the club. She waited a little longer for her phone to charge some more, gathered some of her little belongings in her purse and called a taxi. Her night ahead would consist of giving love to strangers and receiving love from creeps.

I have spent my entire day at university. I have been working on my four final artworks all month, finessing them and making sure they will have a profound impact on others in the same way that the idea of them had a profound impact on me. I spent my month’s money on bits and pieces to place in them, on final prints and on supplies. I presented them to my teacher and to my peers and they were all overly content with the visual display of pieces of my mind and the ways in which I executed them.

I headed back home – I could not wait to dress down to the comfiest of pants and the warmest of jumpers. It was, after all, the second coldest evening of the month, leading up to winter, and I just recovered from a cold, and I need to be better by next week because of a final presentation taking place for my English class. I need all the warmth and comfort I can get. I have been, after all, working quite hard this semester, and all of my work paid off, now I need to finalize some other pieces of work for other subjects, and invest the rest of my time to winter school.

I had free time now, so I put the movie Mr. Wrong on and laughed and cringed at the many scenes involving Ellen Degeneres acting like a heterosexual. Inevitably, due to the lack of sleep I had the previous nights, I fell asleep and woke up to many other movies premiering on television, because Friday nights are accommodated for in that sense. I checked my phone – a few Snapchats, a few notifications. I placed it on charge for later tonight.

Ritually, I prepared myself to head over to my grandmother’s house with my family to hang out with our relatives, watch some horror flicks and laugh at things that happened in the week. I would return home and read a little and head off to bed. And I would not have it any other way.  

The Possession

If you watch a scary movie in a dark, silent atmosphere as you sit on the floor with your feet sticking out underneath a long double bed, you begin to realise that despite how awful the 'horror' is portrayed in the film, especially in instances where ketchup is obviously used in substitute of blood, that you believe whatever is being shown to the extent where anything else is possible.

Midnight, a cold winter evening and I was sitting in the middle of my two male cousins. The one on my left, Jacques, is two years younger than the one on my right, Jean. We decided to watch Children of the Corn on my phone after I had won my very first poker game, reeling in every single chip. We migrated to my grandmother's bedroom, placed some cushioning made up of three fluffy quilts below where we decided to sit, and placed my phone up against a tissue box on the edge of the bed, our feet dangling below it, getting swallowed into the abyss of the Boogeyman's lair.

The volume was not a problem, nor was the really small screen. As soon as we turned all of the lights off, our vision honed in on the very screen and we were immersed in the movie immediately. Soon after, my sister decided to finally hand us the iPad and we continued watching the film on that - a bigger screen, but lower volume. Regardless, after a few more minutes we were immersed into the poorly produced film.

Halfway through a boring scene in the cornfields, I turned to Jean and explained to him an aspect of my day, or something along the lines of that - I cannot recall due to my prominent recalling of what was to happen next. He said, "look at them in the window" out of absolutely nowhere. Not taking anything into account, I stared above the iPad's glow at the window to find nothing there. "What?" I asked, this time curious. He then proceeded to deny the fact that he ever said anything, and his face showed no sign of a lie. Jacques then squealed "I heard you say it too! You said "window"!" But Jean denied it again. I held onto Jacques' arm and screamed a little, playfully punched Jean on his shoulder and told him to drop it. "I didn't say anything," he repeated, and crawled towards the mirror.

"They're here," he said, Children of the Corn still playing in the background. It was still pitch black. "Take a photo of him using flash," Jacques whispered to me. "Hurry!" And I did, wishing that I did not, for right in the corner of the photograph was a strange white orb. Jean then proceeded to walk out of the room for no apparent reason. Jacques and I looked up the meaning of a white orb, and found it to represent 'a guardian angel not from God'. We could not get out of the dark room any faster. We ran to where my sister and Jacques sister were taking leg-puppet videos and decided to tell them all about it, holding the door shut before Jean returned.

"You're over-analysing it!" said their sister, Layal. "You guys are funny."
"We're serious!" said Jacques. "He's possessed!"
The doorknob started to turn and we all squealed. I started filming. The door kept shaking, we kept squealing, and then everything went silent again.
"Oh my God, what is going on?!" Layal exclaimed, her tone changing from suspicious to fearful.
"We told you!" said Jacques. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" he yelled out the door to Jean.
We remained hidden in the room from Jean until his mother came to find out what all of the fuss was about, and Jacques explained it to her, while I filmed Jean. Jean kept turning his head to my grandmother's dark room as though he were talking to someone.

It is interesting how you believe anything if the atmosphere is right. It turned out that it was all an act as a form of revenge towards me winning the entire game of poker for the first time, wiping Jean's chips clean and taking hold of them in a conquering manner. I still think Jacques considers this entire thing to be the total opposite of a joke, to be a total act of reality, and the photograph makes me align with his view.

Mother's Day

As per usual, today was another excuse for my family to gather together and share within ourselves ten large pizzas, how we ended up fitting them all inside of us  I still cannot recall. All in the name of Mother's Day, we headed out onto the freeway and placed the phone order as we drove.

And as per usual, something shook me today. One bridge in the freeway overlooks a large memorial garden, where tombstones lay in commemoration of some we have lost. Not my family though, not yet. But what struck me was looking at hordes of family members wearing black, stopping at tombstones and placing large bouquets of flowers. Little people who the idea of death is still abstract to, big people who know it too well and older people who are expecting it at any moment gathered on a piece of land underneath the freeway as we passed, unappreciative of just how good it is to be alive with people and eating a lot of fresh warm pizza.

And the fact is that I do not live my life to its fullest potential. I still sit here in my little 'everything will be okay every time' bubble and thrive in it when in reality everything is not okay. I need to push myself away from thinking critically about partaking in any activity that will prolong my stay here and push myself away from the abstract thing that is death so that I may live until my time comes. Today reminded me of that. I have my mother, my sister, my entire family, and I still choose the glow of the computer screen over them. I still choose watching videos and looking at pictures of people doing things rather than doing things myself.

I think most people are like that nowadays, though. People have become too afraid to take risks because they feel it is better to observe them being done by somebody else to avoid the pain that may come with the flip-side of that risk. There was a time when I was eighteen that I took so many risks, when I look back at them now I think of the person I was as a totally different character, someone so foreign to me. But that was when I was happier. I had a sort of freedom in anything that I did, but I had to stop it all because it was eating away at me as well, the fastness of it all, the scum that I met along the way, and capitalism knocking on my little door telling me that its rent was due.

So I have turned away from risk to acquire a different form of reward, a reward given to my mind and my pocket. I still need to reward my body, though, and that will come with the rewarding of my mentality. I keep reminiscing to that scene today. Everything can fall away so quickly. It can slip away so fast, the strongest of arms cannot hold on, this entire facade we call 'life' will not be lenient when it wants to leave us, no matter the impact we make. It was not lenient towards Abraham Lincoln. It was not lenient towards Mother Theresa. It was not lenient towards Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Amy Winehouse, nobody. It does not accept any deals. It does not offer mercy to those who have offered it their entire lives. It does not respect any legacies or any endeavours. It wants your soul and there is nothing to do about it but enjoy it while you can.

The reason why I cringe when I think of a career is because you are paid for your time - time can never be bought back. Yes, work at McDonalds for three years as a manager, get paid thousands, that is fantastic - but all you did was swap three years of living for three years worth of money, a mere thing that the government has crafted in order for us to swap things. Even if you are not residing in a third world country, even if you are rather powerful, you are being exploited, and the exploiter is mankind.

Appreciate all that you have right this very moment. Stop all sources of exploitation and sit and listen to yourself breathe for a bit. You exist. You are temporary. So is your mother. Or your sister. Or your aunty. Or your grandma. Or yourself, if you are a female. Or any male. Everyone. Happy Mother's Day. Happy Another Day Day. Go. Live.

Forty-five Seconds

To an elderly person, time becomes a very valuable thing. They begin to think more about how to structure their last days, creating an invisible timetable in their minds and sticking to it in order to feel as though they are ready to leave at any moment, so long as they fulfil most of the things on their lists. This is the case with my grandparents, especially when it comes to their obligatory phone calls. 

They last only forty-five seconds each time, and if not forty-five seconds then a few seconds under, and the span of forty-five seconds is enough to ask all necessary questions before they feel that they are ready to end the call. Each call is structured like this, but in Lebanese:

"Hello my dear, how are you? 

How is school going? 

May God pass you. 

How are your parents? 

How is your sister? 

Are you all alone at the shop? 

I haven't been very well today, I'm going to see if your uncle can take me to the doctor. 

You should try to come see me. 

I miss you. 

Ask your parents if they want to come over tonight. 

Say hello to them for me. 

Would you like anything? 

Okay my love, I’ll see you soon. 

Bye."

The questions they ask and things that they say, both my grandmother and grandfather quite alike in speech, seem to be sufficient enough to work as a goodbye phone call also. It is interesting how phone calls from grandparents differ from phone calls from friends or parents. Friends and parents live in the ‘now’, and will ask up to the weekend about your plans, no further than that. Their questions also revolve around dinner, your location or why you did what you just did, always varying in questioning. Grandparents however like to ask the same things. They seem to take comfort in repetition, even though mine are not going deaf and even though their memories are intact, I do have to repeat a few things, and I only speak louder each time so that I appear as though I belong to my family. It is a norm for us to ask sympathetic things at the volume of The Hulk’s climax.

Their phone calls particularly interest me because of their contexts. I do not think that I will ever ask the same things that they will if I ever live to reach their age. I think I will continue to speak in a shabby way and I will continue to think of better things to say several moments after I hang up and will remember when it is far too late. They converse in a form of art. Though they stick to the same questions, I too am beginning to find comfort in their structure. I expect each question, and I always recite the same answers. They soothe both myself and them. After all, it feels great to have somebody inquire into your life every once in a while, rather every once in a day. We have become experts in these phone calls, seeing as they last precisely forty-five seconds.

But is forty-five seconds enough for a goodbye? Does it suffice as a farewell phone call? Though I am happy whenever they end, I also worry because I feel that they probably are not. I know that despite my annoyance with the calls because of the fact that they occur when I have customers or when I need to use the EFTPOS machine that is linked to the phone line, I will miss them. I think about the possibility of one day not receiving those calls and I feel a sense of abandonment. Gone will be the days of those minuscule calls that mean so much.

I wonder how I will speak when I reach an age of physical and mental fragility. Will I write an invisible conversation template in my mind and be sure to ask each question before I hang up? Of course I will.

Frogs Playing Dead

Today my family and my cousins' family travelled to the same state park we have been travelling to for the last three years, pretending all the way that the scenery we encountered was more interesting than the last time we had visited, a month ago. Little was different, even the two tiny ponies who shared a small patch of grass at the turn-in looked the same.

The river contained in this state park, though, was for the second time in these three years that we have travelled there dried up, and this time we happened to have brought my trust metal detector along with us, hoping to find something along the lines of gold or Ned Kelly's wristwatch. After travelling kilometres through the dried riverbed, we lost interest in the lack of beeping of the metal detector and spend the rest of the trip looking down at the rocks as we stepped past them, in hopes of finding a gleaming golden nugget looking back up at us, awaiting our touch and our awe-struck faces.

We were not lucky enough to live through that moment. In fact, we were not even lucky enough to find a mere crystal, nor a gem stone. Nothing special was found. All that we saw was the repeated amounts of dusty pebbles, scattered around the floor like a child's Legos. Nearing the end of our journey due to the fact that we almost were cooked from the scorching Australian sun, I noticed tiny beings hopping beneath me. Not grasshoppers, nor strange looking centipedes with wings, nor wasps, rather little frogs. 

Jacques, one of my cousin's immediate reactions was that these frogs were poisonous. We spent fifteen minutes running away from the little swamp and I continuously checked my shoes just in case one of these things had hopped into them. I did not want to lose my leg, after all, these minuscule frogs were 'poisonous'. 

After reaching a point far from these jumping poisonous frogs, I came to the realisation that they were not poisonous at all. "Wait," I said, "we should catch them!" Fabulous idea indeed, but we were lacking a container. Jacques' brother, Jean, carried a water bottle. "No," he quickly said, defending his need to conquer his thirst. Behind him sat an alternative, an empty abandoned Coca Cola bottle. So his sister, Layal, picked up the bottle, and returned to us beaming a smile of destruction - destruction to this wondrous habitat. But we were not planning on leaving empty-handed, so we figured that instead of paying one-hundred and fifty dollars in the pet store, why not catch our own here?

And so began the entrapment and capture process of these little frogs. We were more productive doing so than finding precious stones, mainly because we knew that the chances of catching a frog exceeded by millions the chances of finding a nugget. We were right. We caught four, and filled up the bottle with a little bit of swamp water, and headed back to the picnic table where our parents waited.

I noticed one thing about the frogs, though - halfway through our trip back to the picnic table, Layal exclaimed, "they're dead! The frogs are dead!" I explained to her that it was a defence mechanism because of her shaking the bottle so much that they probably thought they were caught in a tsunami of some sort. "No, they're dead!" she insisted. So I held the bottle, and after a moment of calm, they began to move again.

These little frogs play dead. They play dead better than trained dogs, and for moments they had us all fooled. These tiny creatures have the ability to fool beings like us. It is rather fascinating. 

Shooting a Gun

Today, I shot a gun for the first time. Legally, and without harming another living soul - only inanimate objects, of course. Today I, aided with strong metal wires put in place to avoid potential maniacs from turning the gun to aim it at another human, won the battle against a 9mm pistol's recoil, an exhilarating experience it was, all but the price I was charged.

Wearing my aviator sunglasses as a fashionable statement, I entered the shooting centre, almost prancing. The centre was a large warehouse, lathered with the finest antiques - petrol pumps, a long line of rusty lawn mowers, rags, a large golden cash register, a Chevrolet Bel air, a strange golden table, and all other wondrous pieces, all circa the eighteenth century and before. I removed my aviators and spun slowly in circles, gazing at all of the decorative pieces, sprawling from the floor to the ceiling. I was not sure at this stage what I was most amazed about - the fact that my family agreed to accompanying me to the gun range or how many rare and restored antiques I was exposed to in one place.

"He's the collector," the young man behind the counter notified my awestruck father and I. From behind the antique bar emerged a tall, muscular man in his late fifties. He had a slight swimmer's build, and a petite moustache forming on his upper lip, almost hidden by his widening smile that was filled with pride. He said little, and always strode around slowly with a strong hint of his dignity touching the souls of all onlookers.

The man behind the counter talked me through how to load a magazine, load the gun and how to pull the trigger - slowly. The rest was meaningless to me - sure, I would remember to keep my thumbs out of the way of the strong recoiling - people in movies shoot guns all the time, how hard could it be? I just wanted to feel the grip between my fingers and to pull the trigger for the very first time.

Almost two-hundred dollars later, and my father, sister, mother and I stepped into the shooting range wearing protective glasses and headphones. We waited for the family before us to finish. Every time they shot their guns, my eyes automatically closed shut. It was something I could not control. The sound of a bullet exiting the gun was so loud, even under these headphones, that my eyes were frightened. After experiencing the sound of a few more shots, I decided to go first.

I pushed the magazine into the bottom of the pistol - easy enough, it locked into place. I placed my hands correctly around the pistol, keeping in place my firm grip. I brought my vision to the rear sight, and tried to line it up with the front sight, and aimed at the bullseye - surely I would miss, and surely I did - not the entire target, but the bullseye. My first shot landed two rings out of the bullseye, the rest I cannot recall from my excitement. When I tried to reload, I could not hear the safety ranger notify me that I did not need to, and when I did I felt foolish. I kept shooting until the magazine was emptied.

I only missed the six targets six times. Mind you, this was my first time and I am proud of how well I aimed with the flimsy wrist that I have. "So you two girls haven't shot a gun before? This is going to be good," the man behind the counter laughed before he led us into the shooting range. We performed better than he ever expected. In fact, my sister's first bullet pierced the paper a few millimetres away from the bullseye - having spent my life as the elder sibling thinking that I would need to protect her in bad circumstances, I am now beginning to think that she can protect both of us, had we the ability to own a gun.

On our drive back to the hotel, I could not contain my smile. It turns out that attending the shooting range instead of the wax museum turned out much better, despite paying so much for shooting a gun and fifty rounds of American ammunition.

The Upsides and Downsides of Christmas

Christmas is a grand time of the year, where families get together and celebrate the birth of Christ, or so one hopes, by gifting and feasting whilst having the day off from work. However, people also tend to forget the bad side of this holiday event.

Upside: People have the day off work to celebrate with their families.
Downside: Police officers, people working in the hospitality industry, people working in hospitals, people driving trucks, Santa Clause and his reindeer and elves and other people who have to work on the day unfortunately do not.

Upside: People who work on Christmas Day get paid a fair bit more money than when they work on other days.
Downside: That money will have to replace the money that went to buying gifts for people that cannot afford buying themselves things, and the rest of it will most likely be blown away on Boxing Day.

Upside: Most of the world celebrates Christmas. Most shops have exquisitely beautiful Christmas decorations up to lure and amuse customers, and people of Facebook and Instagram post photographs of their Christmas trees and Christmas gifts, and begin to check themselves into their grandparents’ homes to indicate that they are indeed celebrating Christmas without having to cook, but just eat.
Downside: Muslims and non-celebrators of Christmas have Christmas rubbed into their faces from the visible decorations, television commercials and social networking posts, and into their ears from radio stations.

Upside: Christmas Carols.
Downside: The repetition of Christmas Carols.

Upside: Celebrating Christmas by feasting with loved ones and receiving really good gifts after gifting people with what you intended to be good gifts and having a minor panic attack in thinking that while you spent a lot of money on the person, you may not receive a gift back but feeling relieved that you did receive a gift back.
Downside: Celebrating by feasting and gifting without acknowledging Jesus’ birthday. The poor guy was born in a manger, amidst the rancid animal smells.

Upside: Anticipating the arrival of Christmas and making plans to see and be with and feast with people you do not normally see often.
Downside: The obligatory need to celebrate – this comes from media, shopping malls, strangers and relatives. People which accumulate to the epitome of the idea of The Grinch have trouble focusing on hating other things in the world because they are focusing on how horrid it is to know that most of their friends are with other friends and family sharing a nice roasted piece of ham whilst they are sitting at home watching Season Three of Friends with their pet cats snuggled around them.

Upside: Buying really good gifts for your family members and feeling great about yourself for it when you see the look on their faces when they open your gift and realize how cool it is, and how cool you are.
Downside: Not experiencing the family members you have gifted opening their gifts because, again, you have had to buy gifts intended for one person but in reality it is meant for another because wogs like to play ‘pass the parcel’ with their Christmas gifts, despite how much money you spent on them or how applicable the gift is to their personality and interests – they are sure that their relatives will enjoy it regardless. But they thank you anyway and pretend as though they will open it when they are home, but when you are at the other relative’s house and look under their Christmas tree and notice the all too familiar wrapping paper holding the all too familiar shape, reality slaps you in your face and you sink into their sofa and promise that you will never do this again.

Upside: Promising not to buy your wog relatives gifts anymore to save yourself some money seeing as though they gift others based on what you pay.
Downside: Giving in to the Christmas spirit and buying your wog relatives gifts anyway because it is shameful to walk into their house with empty hands in the holiday season, or any season.

Upside: When you did not receive presents and buy yourself a cool present online because you know your interests more than anybody else.
Downside: Online shipping is delayed because of Christmas Day being a day off, so the cool things you ordered late for Christmas will not arrive on Christmas, and you sit there whilst everyone opens their presents, awkwardly flicking your thumbs and wearing a fake smile while your hands are clenched.

Upside: Getting drunk on cheap wine or beer or tequila shots or anything else with alcohol in it.
Downside: Most people celebrate too hard by drinking too much and want to drive around but do not take into account that if they do drive while drunk they may kill not only themselves but other people who have not yet had the chance to celebrate with their loved ones. Drink and drive responsibly, always.

Upside: Being reminded about Christmas time constantly so that you have the chance to make plans and buy gifts and prepare meals.
Downside: Homeless people and people living in third-world or war-torn countries tend to be forgotten by the media and all celebrants of Christmas.

Upside: Having the shops open nice and late so you have something to do and somewhere to go in the event of having finished all pre-Christmas preparations.
Downside: Not being able to tolerate all of the crowds and hoards of people who go to snoop around in shopping malls. Also, having each person want to rub shoulders with you as though you were famous.

Upside: Eggnog, to Americans.
Downside: Eggnog, to me and most Australians. The name makes it sound absolutely revolting and makes me imagine a battered chicken foetus getting poured out of a milk carton. I do not have any intentions whatsoever to place one millilitre of it in my mouth.

Upside: Idea of Mistletoes and having the potential to experience your first Mistletoe kiss.

Downside: Not obtaining a Mistletoe, or obtaining one and having to celebrate with family members and choosing to utterly avoid being underneath it due to the fact that you would prefer your children to have ten fingers and ten toes.

Upside: The food. The glorious Christmas food.

Downside: Having to help wash the dishes because you feel bad for not having cooking skills like the ones your grandma and mother possess.

While there are many more upsides and downsides to list, I will now go and partake in most upsides of Christmas, shutting an eye to the downsides. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake. And while some of you do not celebrate it, I will say Happy Holidays, because it is indeed a holiday.