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The Elf On the Shelf

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When J was about 5 years old, my sister in law happened to go back to Michigan to visit family and went, as always, to Frankenmuth to go shopping at Bronner’s, the world’s largest (maybe?) Christmas store. When she came back, on Thanksgiving when we were all at my mother in law’s hanging out after dinner, she presented my son with a fat box which contained an elf doll and a storybook to go with it. This was (if I remember correctly) way before The Elf On the Shelf became a hyoooge thing. So we took him home, read the story and gave him a name: Gerald Oodleknees.

He was named after my husband’s grandfather, who had passed away when my J and E (his oldest cousin, who is 2 weeks younger than he is) were a little more than two. J has no memories of his great grandfather, since he’d only met him once when he and E were around seven months old and the entire family (Hubs, myself, J, MIL, FIL, SIL, her husband and tiny E) traveled to Michigan to introduce my husband’s grandparents to their newest great-grandchildren.

I’m sure that when my mother in law found out what we named our elf, she was quietly angry about it, probably because she thinks it’s disrespectful. And while I only met my husband’s grandfather a handful of times, I’m pretty sure he’d think that having a toy elf named after him is frigging hilarious. He was himself a wee little elf of a man, who barely stood five foot two on a good day and built like a wee little bird. How he ever got into to military (he was a WWII vet), I’ll never know. Because you’d think it’d be hard to find day to day uniforms (let alone fancy dress blues) for someone that tiny. But Grampa Gerald had a wicked sense of humor, right up to the very end according to my father in law who spent a lot of time at the end of Grampa’s life with him while he was in hospice. Also, he chose to wait until all the family was in town for a big family reunion that had been planned that year for the 4th of July before shrugging off his itty bitty mortal coil. Just because he probably thought it was funnier than dirt (as my father would say).

And it was funny…funny ha ha and funny sad that here we all were, prepared for a big ol’ party that was going to last the better part of a week and we had to go to a FUNERAL in the middle of it, with all the stuff that goes with a traditional Catholic funeral. All the normal gossip too–my sister in law’s choice of footwear (fire engine red 3 inch stilettos) making up at least part of the “Who wore what and what wasn’t appropriate and so on and so forth” talk that old ladies always do at funerals when they’re sitting around with their iced tea, fanning themselves with the paper church fans that somebody thoughtfully provided.

Outside the church hall where the funeral was held, somebody had made a memory board with all kinds of photos and reminisces of Grampa. I tacked on one that I’d made a copy of, a photo from that lone visit when J and E were itty bitty babies. Grampa was holding J on his lap and looking at him with wonder, while J just stared back with a “I think I know you, but who the hell are you again?” look on his face. Grampa was an older, thinner, shorter, balder version of my father in law and I think my son was a bit confused. Not as confused as he was when Great Uncle Ross showed up, though, because Ross (although older, I think? My father in law has 6 brothers and 3 sisters and I get the ages all messed up because here are so MANY of them) looked like my father in law’s twin, minus the mullet. Poor kid spent the entire trip going “Wait..who the hell are you again?” But only in his head, because he didn’t really talk much at that point.

So it only natural, when he received the gift of an Elf On the Shelf from my sister in law that we name him after Grampa.

Because I’m betting that he’s up there, laughing his butt off at the joke.


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