I know the title of this essay sounds a bit like a Dickens novel but the Christmas past I am talking about happens a day after the holiday. The pounds have been put on our bodies like drifting snow in a nor’easter and the aches and pains of drinking more in three days than one drinks in an entire year make eyes look like they are surrounded by bright red Christmas pillows.

In my father’s day the time after the big day was spent building toys. This would mean taking out his tool box and reading a single page of instructions hoping he would understand the English of the person who originally wrote it. When I say a single page I mean one giant single page you put across the living room rug and carefully follow the ‘numbered’ instructions using the ‘lettered’ parts.

Today I find myself studying a 350 page book hoping to understand the techno-jargon of some geek who originally wrote the manuscript in order to drive the non-geeks of the world nuts. I also have to read through the whole book until I find the English instructions. As to why they put the Spanish language first is above and beyond my comprehension. Maybe there are more Spanish geeks than English ones.

I bought my wife a new phone and a blue tooth for Christmas. In my past I thought a phone would work as soon as you charged it for a couple of hours. This no longer holds true. One has to set up the applications and control setting of the phone before it is allowed to ring. Did I say ring? That was another chore I had bought myself because I had to suffer through the rendition of every song created so it could tell my wife she had a phone call.

My pc has nothing on the control panel of my new phone. It does everything from taking pictures and movies to attaching you to the Internet so you can check what is happening in Czechoslovakia and what the weather is like in the Philippines. You can also check your E-mail in order to find out if someone from these countries is checking up on you. The basic problem is the screen is too small to see anything. The keyboard on the phone that used to only display numbers now has a multitude of activities as long as you know what mode to place them in. These same buttons are also too small to be controlled by anyone larger than an Elf.