(Pert Plus not in computer)

Frank: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.
Kramer: What happened to the doll?
Frank: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us.

With Festivus pole, prizes, and cookies in tow, I pulled into the DPK lot ready for action. Sadly, mostly what I got instead that day was tepid attempts to follow the perfectly articulated, simple, and precise exercise instructions provided by the Q. Apparently, Festivus isn’t for all of us! 

As Frank Costanza famously said: “I got a lot of problems with you people and now you’re going to hear about it!”

We rallied ‘round the Festivus pole for warmups and from the first exercise (Goose Steps—one of my invented exercises) it was clear that pax compliance would be an uphill battle this day.

• We ran up the ramp
• We ran down the ramp
• We did an Armageddon up
• We did an Armageddon down
• We did partner exercises
• We did bell exercises
• We did bodyweight exercises

None of these things were done well by most of the pax, but Christmas torpor had obviously already set in and it was clear that these men were here for one reason only: the cookies. But first things first. We needed to address the annual airing of grievances and the feats of strength. Participation was weak, but we had a smattering of complaints ranging from F3 overachievers, to people who put trash in our garbage bins, to cars blocking driveways, to poor attendance at Feast Friday and Toby Talks.

The feats of strength consisted of Jersey Boy doing a knee-to-feet pop-up and Ultraman doing 55 merkins in good form—an impressive feat that went completely and inexplicably ignored during the prize giveaway at the end of the workout. Sorry, Ultraman! Look at it this way, though: now you don’t have to worry about who’s going to get the re-gift of the miniature Festivus pole that Lawn Dart is now burdened with. Also, fitness is its own reward, so you already took first prize.

As a fitting exclamation point to the proceedings, after almost everyone had already left for coffeeteria, Lawn Dart was still looking for his rental truck keys. Bringing the same superb leadership skill I had brought to the workout, I stepped up to help. At first we thought that Titan was just messing with him because that kind of tomfoolery is right up Titan’s alley, but he was quickly eliminated from the list of suspects due to a rock-solid alibi: he drove away and went home.

Dart was sure that he had put the keys on his back left tire and when they weren’t there, we just presumed they had been blown off in the strong winds. That’s when we noticed the sewer grate.

My first thought was: don’t jump to conclusions. I mean what are the odds that on the one day that there’s a strong enough wind to blow keys off a tire, that Lawn Dart’s tire would be directly above a sewer grate? Well, I don’t know the odds, but with the help of our cell-phone flashlights balanced precariously on the grate, the mystery of the keys was soon solved: they were eight-feet down in the dead center of the sewer drain.

Sadly, even three grown men couldn’t pull off the grate because of the truck tire and regardless, we needed something with which to retrieve the keys. A quick trip to my house to rummage through my many junk drawers and stick collections provided the requisite tool. As Lawn Dart struggled on his phone with customer support asking what color the truck was for the third time (“white…still” was the reply), I got down and dirty in the mud trying to extricate the lost treasures from the depths of hell. Sadly, my pole wasn’t long enough. Story of my life.

So back to the house for more sticks and more duct tape. I even brought a golf club in case it still wasn’t long enough. As it turned out, we needed all the sticks AND the golf club, so we wound up with a 10-foot Frankenstein’s-monster contraption. That did the trick and on the first attempt, your humble correspondent snagged the booty and hoisted it to the joyous hands of Lawn Dart, who broke out into a dance of joy that Christmas-Day Scrooge couldn’t compete with. After a bro-hug, we headed to coffeeteria at Lowes—extraction pole in hand. Despite never having seen it, the pax seemed intimately familiar with the unusual device since it was similar to the 10-foot pole women wouldn’t touch them with in high school.

It was a grand adventure punctuated by, surprisingly, a touch of snow. And now, like men who crossed the Antarctic or climbed Everest together, Lawn Dart and I have a forever bond wrought in the fires of our existential struggle for survival in the unforgiving elements of a cold, dark land.

Thanks to Crocs and the gang at Emmaus for converging and to everyone who showed up for the inspired nonsense of Festivus. See you next year!