Before I can properly tell this story, I need to refer you to this post:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/12/year-kenny-loggins-ruined-christmas.html
from one of my favourite blogs, Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and A Half. I honestly almost peed myself the first time I read it, and I passed it along to several friends, one of whom was my cousin Rae, who thought it was just as hilarious as I did.
Fast forward to Christmas day and the family dinner at my parents' house. I had had a LOT of wine, and since I rarely drink, it hit me hard. Also, since I don't drive, I was forced to hitch a ride back into the city (my parents live in an outlying suburb of the city I live in) with Rae and her husband in his giant pedo-van, which thankfully was big enough to carry all the stuff I'd gotten for Christmas. To make things easier to carry, and so we could do it all in one trip, I had stuck several smaller gifts into a large gift back that had come holding the talking plushy bacon that Rae had given me for Christmas. Maybe someday I'll post pics of my substantial collection of bacon-related things. Anyway, I digress.
We loaded the large gift bag, a big box containing large standing heater, a box holding an electric blanket and one other thing into the back of the van. The drive home was uneventful, but when we got there and Rae and I started unloading my stuff, things started to come undone, so to speak.
One of the handles on the gift bag I was carrying tore off, so I resorted to dragging it through the snow and up to the sidewalk. Meanwhile, several paces ahead of me, Rae was having her own difficulties as the handle on the heater box ripped and she nearly dropped it. I managed to drag the gift bag a few more steps before it got caught on something and I kind of lurched, nearly falling over it. Did I mention I had had a lot to drink? Yeah. Rae was stone cold sober, since she had other plans for later in the evening, but you'd have never known it by the way we were both acting. Even I'd have bet we were both shitfaced.
When I nearly fell, instead of cursing or saying pretty much anything that a normal person would have said in such circumstances, I decided instead to call upon Allie's God of Ruined Christmases. "KENNY LOGGINS!!" I hollered furiously up to the sky, rather like Steve Carell screaming, "KELLY CLARKSON!!" when he was getting his chest waxed in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin". Then Rae and I both collapsed into hysterical laughter.
We just sat on the sidewalk, surrounded by my stuff, laughing and laughing and unable to get up. Just as I started to pull myself together, I imagined my neighbours inside the apartment building, doing their own peaceful Christmas night things, when all of a sudden the name "Kenny Loggins" bellowed into the air rent the still, winter night air. For some stupid drunken reason, this struck me as even more funny and I only managed to make it a few steps closer to Rae and the door before I started cracking up again. I can only imagine what my neighbours must have thought.
We managed to make it into the vestibule, where we sat for awhile, catching our breath and trying to pull ourselves together before tackling the last massive challenge before us: stairs. Somehow we made it, and I kept snickering and giggling to myself the whole way wondering what Rae's husband must have thought, sitting in the van in the middle of my unplowed, starlit street watching his wife and her insane cousin sitting on the sidewalk, laughing like loons after screaming something unintelligible about Kenny Loggins.
Ahh, Christmas.
