i have spent this entire grey, rainy day in my house in my pjs in my chair in my book.

i searched and couldn't find this christmas story on here, either. i simply cannot believe i have not told y'all this story already, but here goes:

back in the day, we kids would get gifts from santa in our stockings and the old codger would also leave unwrapped stuff sort of laying around the den. each kid's stuff would be in a pile. one year after the crown prince & i were old enough to know better, elvis & sweet baby james were still receiving lots of santa gifts. i suppose the crown prince & i were receiving some larger gift directly from the santa-source in place of the unwrapped stuff. i don't remember all the particulars of the gift situation, but i do remember that we each got a few things in our stockings but the little boys got santa gifts, too.

they got n-f-l gear. not the pretend uniforms with helmets, but rather the raincoats and boggin hats, each tagged with the logo of an individual team that was apparently randomly selected by santa from the sears catalog based on raincoat & boggin hat size. elvis got the bengals, and he became a sort of ersatz bengals fan because of it.

after all the stocking-emptying and general santa gift excitement had died down, elvis came over to me and said, "what did you get from santa?" and i showed him the stuff from my stocking, and said, "this stuff here. this is what i got." but he knew that the stocking stuff didn't really count as santa gifts so he said, "no, really. what did you get?" and, i showed him the stocking stuff again, and said, "this."

now, elvis was puny and i was not. the clothes he wore were umpteen sizes smaller than my right foot. but he looked at me, and he put his wee tiny hand on my shoulder, and he said, "that's okay. you can wear what i got anytime you want."