The Christmas Cards

I was on fire that night. There wasn’t a thing I could do wrong, not a thing I could say that wouldn’t be exactly what she wanted to hear.

Something primal and exciting in her eyes erased everything around us: the church warmly lit on a cold Friday night, the congregation of fifty or so men, women and children gathered for a special event that we’d all been working towards for months. Sheila and I stood by the table, away from the others and we might as well been on another world.

I’d been crushed out on her for months but too shy to approach her. Not tonight though. Tonight I was on top of the world. Tonight I’d become her knight in shining armor and tonight I was going to reap the benefits of my knighthood.

I was going to ask Sheila to go steady with me. Whenever I’d approached her in the past, my tongue was suddenly a box of pretzels and my stomach felt like plaster of Paris drying in the sun. But tonight I was the hero and Sheila’s eyes burned into mine with admiration and wonder.

Right beside her, on the church’s ping-pong table, was my gift to her: one hundred boxes of hand-made Christmas cards. They would be sold to raise money for the bible camp. Artists in the congregation had spent long hours drawing the nativity scenes, the decorations and the warm fireside scenes. Others had printed the images and still others assembled and packed the cards.

That night we were celebrating over six months of planning and work to raise badly needed money for the camp.

I hadn’t been much help during that time but tonight I’d saved the day. When I’d arrived, the boxes of cards had been piled on the floor in a corner of the church’s recreation room. I wasn’t having any of that. I’d used my dubious juvenile delinquent skills to “get past” the lock to the supply room (which was locked because Darla McQueen, who had the key, was out with the flu) and bring out the ping-pong table.

Everyone was impressed when they saw me set up the table. No one knew how I’d gotten it. They smiled and said “good work” as they watched me pull the folding legs out and steady the table. They were almost beatific when they saw me helping the children carry the boxes of cards from the corner floor to the table. They piled them up on one side and some girls came in from the kitchenette with food and punch for the other side.

I was the table guy, the one who provided the surface for the celebration, and I felt like the most important person in the world. With each nod of approval my courage increased like steam building up in a kettle. She was standing right in front of me, smiling. I was explaining how important it was for me to make sure there would be a table for the cards. Why should seniors in the congregation have to bend over and hurt their backs to look at a stack of cards way down on the floor? Those cards deserved better. Those seniors deserved better. Sheila was enthralled. Her face glowed with pride and the conviction that I was a good man doing good deeds.

I put my glass of punch on the table to make more convincing hand gestures as I explained the logistics of bypassing the lock on the supply room door in such a way as to make it an act of God or something very similar. I swear that girl wanted to wrap her arms around me and walk with the lane together into the perfect marriage.

I was in control of the night and I can only imagine how dashing I looked with my blond hair zipping over my head in a wave that seemed to defy gravity and my orange and blue wide-striped cardigan sweater-the absolute coolest thing back then- and my confident demeanor.

I put my left hand and the table and leaned on it slightly, looking kind of cool and relaxed. Unfortunately, the table was made for ping pong, not relaxation. Not cards and punch…especially cards on one side and punch on the other.

The weight of my body against the center of the table was maybe an ounce or two too much for a table already stressed out by more weight than it was ever meant to support. The table gave way in the center, folding downwards so that both sides of the table slanted down. Sheila and I stared in horror as one hundred boxes of handmade Christmas cards began sliding down one side of the table as a tray of sandwiches and a large bowl of red punch slid down the other side and cards, sandwiches and punch collided at the center of the table, which was now on the floor.

Fifty or so men, women and children stared unbelieving. The words popped out of the air all around us: “The cards.”

“The cards.”

Some of them just stared and though they weren’t nearly convinced that what they’d just seen had really happened. A few looked as though they were going to laugh.

“The cards.”

Some were already making their way across the floor to the scene where red punch was still seeping into partially open boxes and thoroughly dousing the unopened ones.

“The cards.”

I wasn’t so cool anymore. I wasn’t so confident. I stood paralyzed with embarrassment as others moved around me with mops and brooms and muttered things that were obviously aimed at me. I never went back to that church and Sheila married another man. I heard that every box of cards had sold, even the damaged ones, and that someone installed a padlock on the door to the supply room.

And the story of the blond kid who saved the night and then trashed it is still told…almost as a Christmas story.