When the holidays rolled around, spending Christmas with my sister Katherine was the highlight. It all started with her “Smoking Donkey” present. One year, each one of us received a small plastic donkey and were instructed to stick the rolled paper in its mouth and light it on fire, and we would all watch as it blew smoke rings. It tickled our funny bone, and we laughed for hours.
Katherine’s gifts were never a shiny new present. Instead, a bunch of old, dilapidated, hysterically funny items from the thrift store or a crazy joke gift (the year it was Twister, we all ended up like pretzels at the end of the night) was inside the beautiful wrapping paper. She was so good at it that exchanging secondhand gifts became a tradition. Katherine made us realize the true meaning of Christmas — being together as a family, having fun. It wasn’t about receiving nice gifts.
We have never seen K.G. laugh so hard as when our dad was the butt of one of the joke gifts, the infamous “bird whistle.” Dad’s an avid bird watcher, so he was the perfect recipient of this “made-up gift” (actually a prank “backward” whistle from the joke store). “Blow real hard, Dad!” we all chimed in. His cheeks filled up with air, and ours did too from holding back our laughter, knowing what was about to happen. Instead of the expected sound of an owl chirping came a “Poof!” White powder covered my dad’s face; we couldn’t see his eyes.