Since 2008 I have been with the paper as a “Stringer” or freelance reporter.
The job started out with a conversation with the Editor Mike Fak who told me at best I would get one or two assignments a month, but in the end it ended up being so much more.
At that first meeting he told me that he too had started out as a stringer for the paper, and that the most any stringer had every made was $3,000 in a year and that was him.
However, in 2009, Nila became the new record holder when my income from writing along came in over 4 times that amount! Happy me!
Then when the offer came in 2010 to join the office staff for a few hours a day, I knew that the Smith household which has suffered severely since I left Community Action was well on its way to recovery.
My income is not even a fraction of what it was back then, but with my pay and Rich’s combined it is enough, and isn’t that the best we can all ask for to have “just enough”? I think so.
The real blessing though has been the camaraderie of the people that I spend my mornings with 5 days a week and then some.
I can say with no uncertainty that the group I am now happily a part of is the sweetest, most caring, most dedicated to their work and their co-workers group I have ever had the privilege of knowing.
So it will surely come as no surprise that we all enjoy an occasional work-day get together. We started these little lunch time fellowships last fall, and they have come to be a very important part of who we are.
The get together involve a potluck lunch where we set up big tables in the front end of the CCA side of the building, and all the staff from CCA and LDN sit down to an hour to hour and a half of good food and fellowship.
At Christmas time this year, we scheduled one of our potlucks, and with everyone on staff being on tight budgets in this horrid economy, it was decided that we would have a “White Elephant Gift Exchange”.
I have never partaken in one of these, so I had to do my research asking my co-worker and often partner in crime Karen to explain the whole thing to me.
The jest of it is, don’t buy anything. Look around your house for something that you don’t necessarily want or need, wrap it up and put it under the tree.
There are also twists involved, in that the gift doesn’t necessarily have to be something you think someone else will want. In fact it is actually more fun if you can come up with something that you don’t think anyone will want.
I knew that I had tons of stuff left over from my desperate days of selling junk on eBay, so I had no concerns about coming up with the perfect package for this fun little game.
I’ll remember that day always because before we sat down to an unbelievable buffet, my boss Jim offered up a prayer. I nearly teared up (just as I am at this moment) when he spoke to God saying that the day was not about the food or the fun, but about the love we all feel for one another, and the joy we find in being together.
After devouring a huge lunch, it finally came time to pick our gifts from under the tree.
Everything was nicely wrapped but no one had tagged their items as to who had brought them. We drew numbers to decide the order of picking a present. Karen was number one. She had no choice but to take a present from under the tree. However, from then on out, when ones number came up he or she had the option of choosing something from under the tree or taking a gift from someone who had already opened one.
To make it fair then for the first picker, Karen at the end had the opportunity to go around and take any gift she wanted and give her gift to the person from whom she stole one.
I won’t pretend to remember the order of everyone. I know Karen was first, Tim was 3rd I was 4th, Mike was 8th, and beyond that I’m kind of lost.
When Karen got her gift it was a gingerbread house shaped candle, Tim drew a bag with a cocoa mug and cocoa and coffee in it, and I got an onion.
I was not all that unhappy about getting an onion. It was a nice big sweet Vidalia and I knew that Rich and I would enjoy it on a burger, so I was fine with that, something Jim found very humorous, as throughout the even I kept my onion hid, hoping no one would remember I had it and want to take it away from me.
Other gifts that I remember, Mary got a Superman Coloring book, Jan got a bag with a box of crayons and a journal in it, and Brian got one of those glass subway blocks stuffed with lights.
Jim got a long hand knitted contraption that looked like a scarf with pockets on the ends; those I have seen before and kind of think they are neat.
However, when he put this one around his neck the pockets were way too far down there. Finally the person who brought the gift had to explain that it was a book holder. The scarf part goes between the box springs and mattress of a bed and the pockets hang out the sides and hold books, TV remotes or whatever else someone might choose to put in there.
When it came Mikes turn to choose a gift, he took Tim’s coffee and cocoa, Tim then took my onion! I was severely disappointed!
Anyway, I then had to choose a gift, so I took a Snowman shaped fondue set away from Lisa, which Lisa had already taken from someone else (the rule is taken twice, it’s out of circulation) so I knew I was set, no one could take it from me HAHAHA!!!
Throughout the exchange, we were all having great fun. Brian wasn’t really pleased with his glass cube and kept trying to give it away, but he had no takers, Mary was looking forward to coloring Superman, but wanted Jan’s Crayons. The Fondue pot, some thought was strange and others coveted it and resented that it was out of circulation.
And poor Lisa, every time she’d latch on to something, someone would take it from her, so in the end there was one gift left under the tree and only Lisa to open it.
It had been such a fun day, and we were all looking forward to seeing what the poor girl had gotten saddled with, but the look on her face when she peered into that bag was almost enough to make me cry.
He gift, the one she was stuck with was a cast iron clown mechanical bank. The clown has crazy eyes, a big mouth and a mechanism that makes him swallow coins.
As se pulled it out of the bag the hoots of laughter were absolutely deafening. Everyone hated the clown, but Lisa was more than concerned about what she was going to do with it.
Of course it was ugly, a gift no one could love, but in addition to that it was creeping her out, and she said that her 22 year old son would lose his mind if she took the thing home.
I felt bad for her, she was trapped, so as the fun and games came to an end, I did what I thought any friend should do. I took her the Fondue pot and said that I would take the clown.
She protested only mildly before taking the pot back. As we all sat around laughing at the fun we had had, I had a thought, the best way to end the day….maybe.
I carefully put the clown back in its gift bag along with the tissue paper and decoration it had come with, and then, I held the bag way up over my head and yelled “Look Guys!! I’m ready for next year!!!”
With the echoes of all the hoots and hollers of “take a picture of that bag” Don’t forget what that one looks like” and much more, I drove home that day happy and content with my decision and my clown.
A few weeks later, Rich and I had the good fortune to have two of our granddaughters for the News Year’s Eve weekend.
Chelsie who is only 5 has always loved playing with a big bottle of pennies I have, and she never forgets I have them or where they are. So, when she got the bottle out, I went out on a limb and asked her if she was afraid of clowns. “NO!” she yelled. So I went to a cabinet and pulled out the mechanical bank. She played with it for hours, carefully feeding the clown his supper of pennies.
The next day after the party though, when I got to the office Karen had to ask, “What did Richard think of the clown, what did he say?”
Well, I really couldn’t tell her what he said because had I done so, my biggest secret would have been out of the bag because when I brought the clown home he looked in the bag and then asked me about the clown.
I told him the whole story, and he said “Well, I think he’s kind of cute”. Of course that is the exact same thing he said the day before when I was wrapping it up and carefully placing it in a gift bag to place under the tree for my first ever White Elephant gift exchange!
And, now you all know the rest of the story. In my mind, I choose to believe that I was the biggest winner of all in that little game. I made a difference for a friend, and I had the only TRUE WHITE ELEPHANT in the whole bunch!
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