MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT
FROM THERE

  

By Rick_Slick

I was just sending all my Christmas cards out on December 29th when I checked my mailbox and noticed a slip of paper inside telling me that the post office had a present for me!  A present?!  For me?!  I briefly wondered who could be sending me a Christmas present.  I knew it couldn't be from RavenTresses, because for my birthday the previous month, she sent me a text message on my cell phone wishing me a Happy Birthday, and then I was all like, "Where's my present?" and she told me that she sent me that text message as a present for my birthday.  Which I'll admit, was pretty impressive, because usually I catch her trying to dial my phone number on the microwave.  She's so pretty!   For her birthday, she wanted me to take her somewhere expensive, so I took her to a gas station.  Next, I thought it could have been from any one of my trillions of readers from all over the galaxy, but then I remembered none of all y'all have my address.  And if you did, you would probably just use it to send me more hate mail because y'all are jealous of how awesome I am. 

So I jumped into my Voice Anniversary buggy, did some donuts in Videa's yard just to show off that I have a Voice Anniversary buggy and she doesn't, and sped off to the post office to receive my present.  When I got there, I hastily stuffed all of my Christmas cards into the mail slot, ignored some disgruntled postal worker all going off about how that was the document shredder, and ran up to the desk to ask if I could have my Christmas present please.  They didn't know what I was talking about at first, so I had to show them the little "You got a present!" slip that the mailman left in my mailbox.  They took it into the back room, where I could only imagine that all sorts of little magical elves and leprechauns are fixin' to help sort mail and lick stamps and make the entire postal system work, and brought out a hefty box.  It was a Christmas present from There, for winning the Best Comedy category for the recent There Film Festival! 

I couldn't remember what the presents were supposed to be for winning, so when I got home, I tore the box open with my huge, bulging muscles (and scissors, pliers, an electric carving knife, and some ninja stars) and reached inside for my present.  There was a box of some sort inside, and like millions of white foam packing peanuts!!  My favorite!  I had been asking for packing peanuts all year for Christmas from my family and instead they got me lame presents like clothes, a gift certificate to Victoria's Secret that may have belonged to my sister now that I think about it, and some sort of super-hard trivia game where one of the questions was all "How many sides does a triangle have?" and it had a picture of a triangle with four multiple choice answers below it and I still got it wrong, so I don't play that game anymore.  So I removed the box because it was blocking my access to all the foam packing peanuts, and then dumped them out all over my floor to play with them! 

  Many people don't know this, but foam packing peanuts were invented in 1913 by Dr. Cleophus Packingpeanut, who named his revolutionary invention after himself, as do all inventors of things.  It wasn't until the late 1940's or something like that when packing peanuts became edible and biodegradable.  The only way to tell if your foam packing peanuts are edible is to actually swallow one, and if you don't have to go to the emergency room later, then that means they were edible.  They help protect stuff you send to other people because they are soft and foamy, and they cushion the object when the post office people throw your package around the mail room and play soccer with it and whatever they do in the back room with the magical mail elves and whatnot.  Special packaging researchers went through several iterations of packing materials before Dr. Packingpeanut discovered that his invention was more awesome than previous attempts such as: broken glass, snow, petroleum jelly, and marshmallows. 

 Now that you know the history of foam packing peanuts, you can probably appreciate my enjoyment of my new present the same as I do!  I'm not entirely sure why There wasted valuable packing peanut space by throwing that box inside the package... they could have probably put in like 3 million more packing peanuts for me, but my mother says I shouldn't be greedy.  For the first six hours, I had an incredible amount of fun stacking my packing peanuts into different structures, such as foam packing peanut castles and foam packing peanut skyscrapers.  I like the way they feel in my hand when I squish them all together.  I also try to take a different foam packing peanut with me to bed each night, so they all don't get jealous of one another over my attention.  The most important thing about my present -- especially after my last article -- is that try as she might, RavenTresses is unable to break a handful of foam packing peanuts.  She can crush them in her hand, kick them around my room, put them in water, and throw them against the wall, but they never get broken.  She almost snuck up and ate one while I wasn't looking, but her obnoxious Justin Timberlake "SexyBack" ringtone went off on her cell phone and I caught her.  I told her they're not edible and if she did, she'd have to spend all night at the emergency room and they have to surgically remove it from her colon with a pair of salad tongs, so she gave up on spoiling my fun and she's off watching some sort of foam packing peanut documentary on the Discovery channel. 

So, in conclusion, thank you for my foam packing peanuts, There!  I hope the other winners of the Film Festival enjoyed their packing peanuts as much as I did, and for all of you who didn't win the Film Festival, I hope that you enjoyed your Christmas presents this year and have followed the advice in my last article to make sure you don't break them!  Except for Parker... she probably broke all her Christmas presents so she has something to rant about this week.  If you don't happen to celebrate Christmas, then, well, I don't understand you at all and I am sad for you that you don't have any presents to play with like I do.  Tomorrow, I think I'm going to paint my new foam packing peanuts each a different color.  Happy New Year and Whatnot!

 

[Disclaimer:  The Voice does not endorse mistaking the packing material for your actual present, eating packing peanuts "just to see if they're edible", tearing up co-workers' landscaping with a company car that they have not been issued yet just to show off the fact that you have one and they don't, or failing to understand those who do not celebrate Christmas just because they have no presents to play with.]