What’s gotten into me?

One week into December, already I found Christmas presents for everyone in my family. That’s some sort of phenomenon … for me.

Five or six years ago around Thanksgiving, my older brother, the certified genius, hatched this novel idea: he started a chain e-mail to all his siblings with a list of items he would like as gifts. We each reply to the group with our own wish list. Throughout December, we pass along secret messages about who will buy what for whom without them knowing. Now an annual tradition, the chain serves multiple purposes: we get stuff we want or need, we can team up whenever money is an issue, we avoid giving someone the same gift and we keep a running commentary that helps when something is purchased or hard to find.

But I’ve been reluctant to tag along on another one of Markie’s schemes, even though this one proved to be fail-proof. Isn’t one joy of Christmas the moment you unexpectedly stumble across the gift that was meant for someone you love? And aren’t you supposed to keep quiet as anticipation builds for the big morning, when you finally get to see the heart-warming expression of surprise on their face? Yeah, I’ve always been a sucker for those movies.

I thought of the chain as a fallback, an emergency on the last few days in case weeks of browsing markets still left me desperate for an idea of what to get so-and-so. Of course, that inevitably happened every year, only my list of remaining so-and-so’s was long enough to fill a grand jury at my trial as a lousy giver. To this day, storytellers up and down the east coast still bring up the year I hurried to a nearby convenience store the day of Christmas Eve, bought every tin of butter cookies still in stock, slapped on a red bow and doled them out to everyone in our house. The fable ends with a solemn conclusion that police dug up several of those tins, never opened, at a landfill in New Jersey.

That episode had been the earliest I ever managed to finish Christmas shopping, until now. Already up for the challenge just two days after Thanksgiving, I needed only about 12 minutes to finish the blueprints (meaning a blue pen was used to scribble my design in the corner of a page from last week’s Chieftain) of the perfect action figure. Most of those minutes were preoccupied with heating up a Hot Pocket for brain fuel. I spent another five minutes coming up with the name.

Slick the Sportswriter comes in full costume: sleeves rolled up, doughnut in his right hand, fedora with a press pass tucked in the crown, and a trench coat, its interior pocket hiding a flask. It’s for coffee. Pull the string on Slick’s back and hear him shout, “Aw, trust me coach!” or “Whatta ya mean ‘off the record?'” and “What a scoop!” Conversations don’t have to be one-sided. Accessories include a tattered note pad and pencil worn to a nub. Wind the left arm around a couple of times, and watch him jot down your comments in the typical reporter’s shorthand. And Slick is never far from his oversized camera, with its big flash bulb. Yet, he always keeps his grip on that doughnut.

Plop Slick in front of your television, tune into any game and behold the sportswriter in action. He’s just standing there, you might say. So it appears to the casual onlooker. But while Slick watches the event unfold like every other spectator, his mind is furiously at work, trying to decide what to say to that attractive girl seated in the fourth row of the bleachers. Always the fourth row. Otherwise, he really goes to work later at his desk.

Of course, you’ll have to buy Slick’s corner of the office. It features the very popular water cooler, his typewriter and wastebasket, flooded by crumpled pieces of paper. Whenever Slick takes a seat, the pressure triggers sound effects of his telephone incessantly ringing. Callers are dying to hear him utter one of those catch phrases again.

So here we are, two weeks before the holiday, and I’ve already found the gift. The last step is to contract a toy manufacturing company. Of course, I’ll just hold onto Markie’s e-mail as a fallback.

Hector del Castillo is the Chieftain’s sportswriter. E-mail comments and questions to hdelcastillo@wallowa.com.