Tom & Sue Brents graciously hosted in their lovely North Richland Hills home. We started with a holiday feast featuring ham and almost any delicious side dish or dessert imaginable, then moved on to installing our incoming officers for the January 1 - June 30 term.
We all gathered in the living room for a fun evolutionary story; that is, someone starts a tale, then passes off to another Toastmaster for additional embellishments. While the original premise of this year's story was debating the origin of sled tracks on a snowy roof, it didn't take long before the following elements were introduced: spiked egg nog, skid marks, Tralfamadorian aliens, Jack Daniels Black Label (soon shortened to "Black Daniels"), lactose intolerant Santas, turkey turbo jets, Big Wheel Transformers that can flatten under the door, zombie Santas, and a nicely bottled shot of "Holiday Spirits."
Whew! By the time we wrapped up our Christmas tale, everyone was laughing and applauding each other's creativity and ingenuity in tying everything together. We moved on to our Chinese Gift Exchange (or "Dirty Santa" as it is sometimes known) which started out tame enough but soon degenerated into a free-for-all of thievery and name calling. Let's just say "Ho! Ho! Ho!" has more than one meaning now!
Any hard feelings soon vanished like Holly's delicious secret-recipe fruitcake, however, and all the gift exchange participants went home with something satisfactory (or at the very least, re-giftable).
Please be aware in the coming weeks that if you hear a seemingly senseless inside joke about skid marks, lactose intolerance, or excessive references to alcoholic beverages during our meetings, it's nothing too serious.
You just had to be there.
