9. If you forget that pets aren’t presents, maybe use your technical skill to build your son a clock with a back-up battery and be present enough in his life that you can make sure he follows the care instructions for that pet correctly.

8. Always make your Yule Log from last year’s Christmas tree, that way you can be sure it will not come to life and murder you and all your friends.

7. Don’t wish yourself out of existence. Call a mental health line instead.

6. As every preschool teacher knows you should do names to faces rather than a head count before the family trip. This way you can avoid leaving a family member behind to face burglars on his own.

5. Give your spouse a wishlist, so that he doesn’t buy you a comb for the hair you cut off to afford his Christmas present.

4. If you live a decent life and are nice to people at Christmas, you can have a pleasant Christmas Eve with family and friends instead of having a series of nightmarish encounters with ghosts and the threat of your own eminent demise.

3. If there are any missing people from your sorority house, stay at a hotel, ace your finals, and then GO HOME! Do not stay around to party with your sorority sisters and let your boyfriend try to convince you to keep the baby.

2. If a stranger appears at your holiday festivities, do not accept his offer to chop off his head. I promise you, he will be fine even if you play soccer with his head, and he will expect to chop yours off next year. So, unless you have the whole next year available to search for him, don’t do it.

Me while the rest of the household went to the movies today. I lost track oh how nights of Hades II I played. It was A Lot.

And, now you know a dirty joke that was told by Bill Clinton, so that’s fun.

There may have been a fifth thing, but if so I can’t remember it.

That’s probably my most entertaining bit of family lore.

What are the four worst things about being an egg?

You only get laid once. You come in a box with eleven others just like you. Only your mother will sit on your face. When you’re old, it takes you ten minutes to get hard.

The other story is actually that he told my mom the dirtiest joke she ever heard (and she shared it gleefully; it was a kind of big deal to me when I was old enough to hear it).

The other replied promptly, “I like it. Now all she needs is whips and chains.”

And Bill Clinton added, “And leather, don’t forget the leather.”

- I find myself wondering now if he was trying to set them up. How often does a guy ask another guy what he thinks of a woman’s new haircut? Huh.

A bit later (sorry, I don’t remember the specifics of this part of the story, and mom’s 12 years dead, so I can’t ask her), she saw him again at a later event with another member of his staff.

Bill asks how this other member of the staff likes my new haircut-

And when Mr. Governor saw it, he said (please imagine this is n his voice), “I like it. Now all you need is whips and chains and leather.”

When I was in first grade, my mom got her hair cut extremely short. Rosemary’s baby short, but because of the way her hair grew it went straight back from her forehead with the tiniest hint of poof at the front. Very trendy at the time.

Also, she never said a bad thing about him. These are stories of two people with a raunchy sense of humor. Bill Clinton did *not* harass my mother. With that out of the way, I will tell you the haircut story.