Are you?

The question we all hate to hear this time of year? Yes, of course you know exactly what it is:

"Are you done with your Christmas shopping yet?"

Only two types of people ask this question: those who finished on or before the Black Friday sales expired and those who are still desperately scrambling on Christmas Eve.

The former group of people look all smug when they ask the fatal question. Usually, when two people from this group meet, you are in for a friendly game of one-ups-manship as each tries to outdo the other by having finished their shopping the soonest. There might even be a bit of wrangling over relative definitions of done. Are you done when the final purchase is made? When you bring it home? When you wrap the last present? When UPS picks up your last outgoing parcel?

No matter how you define done, this crowd isn't likely to get violent over it. They have nothing over which to become angry, you see: they are already done.

During Christmas week, folks in the latter group grow more and more agitated and stressed out. They are simultaneously shopping for Christmas dinner groceries and Christmas presents. They begin to develop a manic glint in their eyes, which may or may not be accompanied by a developing tic in the lower left eyelid. Presence or absence of the tic can be scientifically correlated; statistically likelihood of the tic's presence is inversely proportional to the time remaining until Midnight Mass.

When two people from this group encounter one another, the game of one-ups-manship which ensues is more along the lines of a mutual sympathy party. Each one bemoans the wee, short bit of time remaining. They compare notes on which presents might actually be purchased during the after Christmas sales. They rationalize that with the overload of shipping in progress, they can tell a little white lie to Aunt Ester who lives three time zones away; as long as they "forget" to put tracking on the package, who can prove that they shipped the day after Christmas, not the day before?

Here's where things can become a mite interesting: when a person from the I'm-already-done camp asks a person from the would-you-get-out-of-my-way-and-let-me-finish camp how the shopping progresses. The eye glint becomes murderous. If the shopper who is already done doesn't shut up about enjoying the peacefulness of the season and the caroling of the bells, he or she is liable to find themselves dripping in hot coffee: which the frantic shopper has been all but mainlining as a source of energy for the past three days and which they just flung onto the smug shopper's fancy coat.

I am an adjunct professor. Into which group do you suspect I fall these recent years.

Aren't you glad that I am not a coffee drinker?

PS - I found some very cool looking like Pentagoand Think Fun Math Diceover on Amazonthis morning while waiting for my last few students to finish their exams. The local toy emporium does not carry Qwirkle. Think Neatnik might take a rain check?