Yes, Mrs. Duggan, There is a Santa Claus

"He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy."

During the universal transition from childhood to adulthood, something happens to our perspective of the holiday season. All of a sudden, Christmas is not as much about magic and imagination as it is about braving the traffic by the mall or finding the last available "Zhu Zhu Pet" or getting the Christmas cards out on time. The hustle and bustle of Christmas, which fueled our childhood anticipation, often times produces stress and anxiety instead during our adult years.

But I am an elementary music teacher with 500 pairs of innocent eyes under my tutelage. And though the Christmas season can be a music teacher's worst nightmare, I am pretty sure I have the best job in the world at this time of year.

As a general music specialist who manages to squeeze 220 elementary school kids onto 17 risers every year right before winter break, I have the distinct privilege of reliving that childhood excitement through a musical collective consciousness that includes reindeer that really can fly and a jolly, plump, older gentleman who shimmies down our chimneys on December 24.

So, I've decided to share the experiences with my loyal blog readers (and I know there are several of you) that keep me tapped into my youthful side during the Christmas season.

In the month leading up to the Christmas program, my students lead me into all sorts of philosophical discussions with age-old questions such as, "What if you don't have a chimney? How does Santa get into your house?"

"Santa's magic," another student will reply before I can even think of a sagacious response. "He can make a magical chimney."

"How does he get down it if he's so fat?" another child will ask.

"He can squeeze himself into any shape he wants," answers one of his/her classmates.

"Like a liquid shape-shifter," I add, pleased with my wisdom and my somewhat Sci-Fi reference.

Usually, after I have offered my adult input, I am met with blank stares.

This year, my favorite Christmas program story revolves around one of my 1st grade girls. Let's call her Jillie. Two weeks prior to the program, Jillie suddenly decided to sing in a shrill, high voice that hung out about a perfect fourth above the actual pitches of the songs. She had never sung like this before. She had always matched pitch and had always been one of my stronger singers. All of the other children in her class started giving her strange looks out of the corner of their eyes. Then they would glance at me and surreptitiously point at her as if to say, "What are you going to do about Jillie, Mrs. Duggan?"

I quickly put a stop to the kids' reactions, vowing never to be that "horror-story" music teacher who traumatizes students into never singing again because she allows the class to make fun of them or tells them to sing softer or just move their lips.

When we started practicing in the gymnasium, Jillie miraculously went back to singing on pitch, but with a bit more oomph than I had remembered her having in the classroom. She could be heard above everyone else, even when all 220 kids were singing at once. The program could have been entitled, "Jillie and the Back-up Chipmunks Sing Christmas." During the morning program, she sang different lyrics than everyone else on Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. By the afternoon program, she had remembered the correct words again.

“Do you think she has a future as an opera singer?” one of the 3rd grade teachers asked me the next day.

The day after the program, we held a school-wide assembly where the faculty performed for the students and led the kids in a caroling sing along. Our last song was "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and in walked a perfectly timed Santa with a "Ho ho ho!"

"Santa!" I exclaimed, eliciting a laugh from my principal who was most likely amused by my childlike salutation.

I wasn't alone in my sentiments. One of the first graders stuck his head in every classroom on his way back from the gym proclaiming, "Santa is here! No really, he's here! Santa Claus is here at school! Did you see him?"

That afternoon, I returned to my classroom and found a homemade card awaiting me on my desk, "Dear Mrs. 'Dunean,' Merry Christmas! I enjoyed your Christmas Program. I hope you get a nice present. Love, Rosalia."

Well, Rosalia, I did get a nice present, as I do every year. Like I said, I have the best job in the world.

"No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."

(Beginning and ending quotations from "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus," by Francis Pharcellus Church, September 21, 1897.)

Uncooperative Turkeys

This year, Dan and I had to stay in Boise for Thanksgiving. Typically on this gluttonous occasion, Dan and I spend one year with my family and the next with his family. But due to a previous commitment, we were unable to travel anywhere this year.

I didn't mind. I enjoy cooking although I don't think anyone else in my family believes I can. I didn't spend a lot of time in the kitchen with my mother when I was growing up. Instead, I entered adolescence complaining about our male-dominated society and being forced into gender roles and that I wasn't going to end up barefoot and . . . well, you know the rest. This may have left the impression that I did not have any desire to don an apron and impersonate Donna Reed.

But remember people, cooking is all about following rules. And even though I may talk about bucking the establishment and sticking it to the man, I'm an awesome rule follower.

When I moved away from home at age eighteen and had to cook for myself, I found that I kind of liked it.

Every year, I ask whether or not I need to bring anything for the Thanksgiving dinner. I have all of my mother's favorite holiday recipes and since my mother is no longer living, I would think that some of my family would want at least one of her dishes on the table. But my immediate family consists of only men now, and their stomachs are extremely adaptable to new traditions. If they are fed, they are happy.

So usually my question is met with, "Can you pick up some rolls from Costco on your way into town?" Or "No, I think we have everything covered."

This year, I was eager to finally be in control of my own Thanksgiving meal. (Control is very important to us awesome rule followers.) And I wouldn't even have a bunch of women feeling obligated (as I do every year) to ask whether or not they could "help" with anything in the kitchen.

When Dan asks if he can help, I usually say, "No, not right now. But you know what would be really helpful? If you do the dishes at the end of dinner." That's how the responsibilities are divvied up in my household. And then I don't have to deal with people under my feet in the kitchen - a byproduct of my control issues, which I am sure I inherited from my mother along with her Thanksgiving recipes.

Then I realized I had to cook a turkey. I don't know about other families, but my Thanksgiving schema consists of a haggard mother in a bathrobe rising at 7:00 in the morning to put the turkey in the oven, a starving household at 1:00 in the afternoon, and meaning-of-life questions such as "Why hasn't the thermometer popped yet?" or "Hasn't it been six hours?"

"My mother always had trouble timing the turkey too," Dan said as we stared at the red plastic thingy that hadn't popped yet even though it had been roasting for an hour over its supposed maximum cooking time.

But I was different. I had made a list! I had calculated every dish exactly according to the maximum roasting time for the turkey. I had meticulously delineated the time to begin preparing each dish so that everything would finish cooking at exactly the same moment. I knew that was much more anal than both my mother's and mother-in-law's cooking practices. But I still was defeated by the uncooperative Thanksgiving turkey tradition.

So we kept the food warm and ate our Thanksgiving meal about two hours behind schedule. And it was just fine. The world didn't end because my turkey had decided not to follow my carefully plotted agenda. Anyway, what would Thanksgiving be without uncooperative turkeys?

Taking the Facebook Plunge

On August 9, 2009, I became a born again Facebooker. I had received several requests to join Facebook over the past year, but I had ignored those e-mails and lived my life ignorant of the Facebook-shaped hole in my heart.

I already had a MySpace account, mostly because my dad wanted me to spy on my brother Steve while Steve was in college. I had quit using it out of boredom. I only had four friends, one being my husband and another being my brother, who I was feeling a little guilty about having as a friend since I was supposed to be doing the James Bond thing with him.

"But Facebook is different. It's better," 30-somethings would tell me. "Trust us."

One day I decided to clear out my e-mail inbox and came across one of those Facebook invitations.

"I wonder what will happen if I click on this link," I thought. I clicked and entered a realm of cyberspace where I didn't even have to search for friends. They were already there, waiting to baptize me into the First Church of Facebook.

"Welcome to Facebook, Princess!" "It's good to finally see you on Facebook!" "It's been a long time!"

I felt so popular. People I hadn't seen in decades were showing up on my computer screen.

About five minutes later, my husband Dan sat down on the office futon with his laptop.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Joining Facebook," the software engineer replied, not to be technologically outdone by his wife's sick computer skills.

We spent the next few hours making comments such as, "Wow, he's gotten fat." "Where's all of his hair?" "Where's all of her hair?" "They have like 500 kids!" "He's gotten fat too."

Computer Genius Dan, impressed by the design of Facebook, then started talking in a language I didn't understand.

"This is so much better than MySpace. You don't have the hacked customization and the user interface is more elegant blah blah blah . . . "

I tuned him out until he said, "I just poked you," with a self-satisfied grin. "I don't know what that means, but I did it."

A few minutes later, I heard him exclaim, "Whoa! You're a lot better looking than that Becky Turner!" Apparently, he was looking up people with my maiden name.

Then he said to me, "Can you delete friends?"

"Who do you want to delete?"

"You."

"Why?"

"'Cause it would funny."

I must have scared him with my wifely watch-what-you-say look because he quickly responded, "I'll add you right back," with a nervous laugh.

He was sidetracked from deleting me from his friends' list, however, when he received another request.

"Why do these people keep wanting to be my friend?"

"Yeah, especially when you're deleting your own wife."

"I barely even know her," he said, referring to his new friend request. "Do I really want to add her as a friend?"

"So ignore her."

"Should I?"

"If you want to be mean."

While Dan entertained himself by looking at pictures of people he knew but refused to add as friends (he doesn't really like people), I found out my father had also joined Facebook a few days earlier. I added him as friend just before reading an article on the Time website about "What Happens When Your Parent Joins Facebook (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1909187,00.html)."

The article refers to a website called http://myparentsjoinedfacebook.com/ which showcases embarrassing Facebook threads about Bengay, rectal exams, and intimate moments between parental units. The article also mentions that parents have been known to invade their children's privacy or act as the "grammar police" while on Facebook.

So far, my dad's Facebook Wall consists mostly of posts about the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Bears, and Boise State Broncos. Occasionally, he'll comment on the quizzes I take, especially the ones entitled "When will you get pregnant/How children will you have?" since the results are always, "Zero children. You're never getting pregnant." Of course, I haven't told him that those results are totally rigged . . . by me.

And as for acting as the grammar police, he would tell you that responsibility would most likely fall on my shoulders. (The alcoholic beverage is spelled "champagne," Dad, not "champaign." That's the city in Illinois.)

Dan and I have been on Facebook now for 78 days, 1 hour and 30 minutes (well, 1 hour and 35 minutes for Dan). I have 151 friends (I realize, by Facebook standards, not very many). Dan has 27.

"You're very social," Dan said on Thursday. "You have 151 Facebook friends. Me, I just ignored another person from my high school today."

"Those people want you to be social."

"Nah, I think they want to be able to say they have 150 friends or more. Under 30 is much better."

The moral of this story is go ahead. Join the First Church of Facebook. Even if you only have 30 friends, at least you can spend a lot of time finding out who's gone prematurely gray.

Now, that Twitter thing . . . I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon, especially not without my girl Miley Cyrus . . .

Match-a-phobia

When it comes to my marriage, I am typically the neurotic half of the equation. I am terrified of heights, snakes, bears, spiders, going down steep hills on roller blades or cross-country skis, riding up actual mountains on my mountain bike, flying over water, touching door handles, setting my purse on the restroom floor, etc. And I silently sing "Happy Birthday" when I wash my hands to make sure I am lathering up for a full 20 seconds.

My husband Dan, who is the exact opposite of me in almost every personality trait, does not seem to have any of these issues. To the outside world, he's not really an issues person. He's collected, cool-headed, composed, or - as the young people would put it now days - he's chill. However, he does have one little hang-up I discovered fairly early in our relationship, a strange idiosyncrasy I like to call "Match-a-phobia."

I caught my first glimpse of Dan's "Match-a-phobia" during a local talent show at the Western Idaho Fair. We showed up, apparently an especially handsome couple, because a friend of ours said, "Hi Becky, hi Dan. Hey, you guys are really starting to look like you fit together."

"Really?" I responded, hardly noticing Dan's deer-in-the-headlights expression. "How so?"

"I don't know. You just . . . match."

Now, Dan has blue eyes and blond hair. I have brown hair, freckles, and dark green eyes. He's five-ten. I'm five-two. As far as physical looks go, we match about as well as Betty and Veronica. I suppose our friend was referring to our outfits. Dan must have assumed the same. His eyes were darting up and down and back and forth between his attire and mine. It wasn't like we were wearing "His" and "Her" shirts. At best, we were both dressed in similar shades of blue.

I took this comment as a compliment. (Yay! We match! How cute!) What I didn't realize was the amount of anxiety that this idea of "matching" would cause my poor husband over the course of our marriage.

It's not that Dan doesn't want to be associated with me. He just wants to forge his identity with the clothes - more specifically the color of the clothes - he's wearing. (Honestly, he dons a T-shirt and jeans most days of the week even in 20-degree weather.) I could be wearing a dress, but if it's at all similar to the shade of his shirt, back in the closet his shirt goes.

Sometimes he asks me, "Do you think we match too much?" because Dan also has a hard time distinguishing between certain colors and shades of colors. It's a tough life when someone with "Match-a-phobia" also has a slight case of color blindness.

I like to reply, "Why, no. Not at all," very innocently. It makes Dan's face funnier when someone mentions how well our clothes match.

Last August, Dan and I were getting ready for a wedding. I noticed Dan surveying the two of us in our bathroom mirror.

"No, we don't match," I assured him before he had a chance to say anything.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

That evening, as we were sitting down at the reception dinner, Dan's sister thrust her camera into my father-in-law's hands.

"Take a picture of them," she said, referring to Dan and me. "They're so cute. They match."

"Did you hear that?" Dan hissed.

I just gave him a wicked smile.

Name Tag Sunday

Today I will be addressing a phenomenon that my husband and I were privileged enough to experience at our church a few weeks ago. This phenomenon, which I have so endearingly coined Name Tag Sunday, was most likely the result of an "Overbearing Christian Care and Compassion While Making Annoying Connections Committee" meeting where its members decided that the best way to make people feel welcome at our church was to make them all wear name tags.

And when I say all, I mean all. Try to sneak by the Starbucks-esque table stationed reverently in front of the sanctuary door and covered with blue and white "Hello, my name is . . ." labels , and you ran the risk of being hunted down and marched out of the worship service until you had properly applied the adhesive over your heart. Just in case you haven't read Exodus 20:1-17 recently, the Bible clearly states "You shall not neglect to wear name tags on Name Tag Sunday" right after "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." It's that important.

How do I know all of this? Easy. My husband and I had the nerve to attempt to enter the sanctuary without filling out name tags on (gasp) Name Tag Sunday.

It was an honest mistake. Dan and I were running a little late, so we sneaked in the back door of the church rather than entering through the "Meet and Greet" door, where everyone gets a handshake or a hug, and we unknowingly bypassed the name tag table. As we were just about to sink into the back pew, relieved to have made it on time and before the first hymn, we were stopped by a woman with a sucralosely sweet smile, perhaps a member of one of those aforementioned committees, perhaps even the member who came up with the whole "Name Tag Sunday" concept.

"Can I get you to go out there and fill out a name tag?" she said with a sing-song, reproachful tone. "We're asking everyone to fill out a name tag."

She escorted us back out of the sanctuary, to the lobby, and stood over us as we obediently filled out our name tags.

"We're trying to get to know everybody's names," she said.

The conversation in my head replied, "And I'm sure forcing people to fill out one name tag on one Sunday is a great way to learn everybody's names."

In real life, I just nodded.

"Are you new here?" she asked us.

"I've been attending this church for 14 years," I said. "We got married here."

Dan and I attached our name tags and were about to tiptoe back into the service, which had incidentally started by this time, when she stopped us again.

"Wait. You didn't write your last name," she reprimanded. "What's your last name?"

"Duggan," I said.

"So, Dan and Becky Duggan," she said with deliberation as she read our name tags. "Nice to meet you."

Finally, we were released from this compassionate ministry that our church had so zealously taken on. We sheepishly slid into our seats, like children who had just been released from a time out. Ironically, the sermon had to do with thanking God for your spiritual family even if they cause you anguish. Of course, if my spiritual family causes me too much anguish, they end up in my blog.

As we were on our way home, Dan, who is never bothered by trivial matters, said, "If we were new to the church, would that really have made us feel welcome?"

I am pretty certain that I can make the distinction between the true nature of God and meaningless church frivolity. But what about people who are new to the faith, people for whom church parishioners are the only reflection of Christ? What exactly are we emphasizing here, church people?

Going Green (without causing myself too much inconvenience)

Earth Day always manages to shed a light, a gigantic energy-efficient fluorescent light, on my hypocritical, liberal activist wannabe but don't wannabe inconvenienced lifestyle. If you have carefully followed my blog, and I know there are many of you (mostly family members) out there, you may have picked up on an overarching theme that encompasses the majority of my writing. Guilt. And Earth Day is my most guilt-ridden day of the year. I know we need to save our resources, take care of our land, air, and water, stand up for human and animal rights both globally and nationally. But am I willing to make drastic changes to accomplish those goals? Probably not.

I used to work with a teacher who really lived what she preached. She drove a fuel efficient car, supported fair trade, bought local produce, boycotted Nike, Con-Agra Foods, and Wal-Mart. She wouldn't even wear a diamond in her wedding ring because of the horrific diamond conflicts in Sierra Leone. Another colleague commented on her once, "She's an innovative teacher, but she dresses like she's going on a hike everyday. She doesn't look very professional."

When you truly stand up for your principles and refuse to buy sweatshop produced materials, that doesn't leave you very many options, a sad commentary on American society and our labor outsourcing practices. Personally, I still want to look professional and fashionable. Like I said, a sad commentary . . .

Every year around Earth Day, I spend the whole week at school teaching recycling and Native American Mother Earth songs. I mean, at least I can teach about recycling without feeling like a complete Pharisee. My husband and I are the Royal Family of recycling. In college, I would fish the aluminum cans out of my friends' dorm room waste baskets. Now, Dan and I hardly throw anything away. We keep paper grocery bags in our pantry filled with plastics, cans, glass, paper, and magazines, nevermind the fact that all of the discarded lids end up in landfills choking baby seals.

Every week, I take my reusable bags to the grocery and recycle the plastic bags that they still insist on giving me for one item when my environmentally-friendly bags are full. I am properly offended when they try to bag my remaining groceries in plastic, and I feel contrite all the way back to my fuel efficient -- er -- SUV.

In the first grade classes this year, I extended the lesson to musical activities about taking care of our Earth's animals.

"Some people kill animals, and that's sad!" one little future PETA member said.

"But they eat them! That's not bad!" another little future Fish and Game Officer said.

A chorus of little hunters chimed in, "It's not wrong to hunt! It's for food!"

I shared my wisdom, "Some people choose to hunt legally for sport, and they eat the meat and use the animal for survival purposes. But there are also other people who choose to eat vegetarian. They choose not to hunt or eat meat."

"Like the vampire on Twilight!" the PETA girl said. "He was a vegetarian!"

"That's not quite the same thing," I said and quickly changed the subject.

Dan and I have really tried to make small changes to help out the environment and boost our healthy lifestyle. We bought BPA-free water bottles. We quit microwaving plastic . We use dryer balls instead of fabric softener even though all of my skirts cling to the back of my thighs and my fleece coat has so much static charge that I refuse to wear it when I'm pumping gas for fear of blowing up the entire station.

And how can I forget? We replaced most of our light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs that cast a beautiful purplish hue over our entire house, like walking into a school gymnasium. I'm just waiting until "They" come out with some report that says CFLs are no longer prudent alternatives because of the unsafe levels of mercury, that "They" previously were unaware that such levels existed in those bulbs. Oh well, then we'll just make a few more adjustments that don't inconvenience us too much.

The Infamous Wisdom Teeth Extraction

I finally did it, went under the knife and had all four of my wisdom teeth removed. It must be understood that my decision to have the surgery has been a long, desolate road lined with guilt and coercion that began a decade ago when those tiny extra molars were just a blip on an x-ray.

The dentist first tried to convince me to get them taken out when I was in my early twenties. He referred me to an oral surgeon and told me to check with my insurance company. At that time, I was still on my parents' insurance so I took the information home to my mother.

"These young dentists with their new ideas! They just want to take wisdom teeth out before they even cause any problems. His father (our former family dentist before his retirement) would have never recommended it! You shouldn't have to go through this kind of surgery unless there's something really wrong with you. It's not worth it!" And she threw away the referral.

Over the next few years, if I brought up the dentist's suggestion, my mother would dismiss it.

"That's ridiculous. Your father, grandmother, and I still have ours, and nothing's wrong with us. Don't let those young dentists guilt you into an unnecessary surgery." I didn't have the nerve to tell her that my guilt wasn't really originating from the dentist.

So I quit bringing it up. By my mid-twenties, my wisdom teeth still hadn't even broken through the gums, and I figured they just wouldn't ever come in.

Imagine my surprise when I turned thirty and started teething like a one-year-old. Even though my mother wasn't around anymore to play devil's advocate, her voice still rang out in my head.

"Who cares if they swell up and hurt every now and then, if it hurts when you go in for a cleaning, if they're impacted, if your bottom teeth are growing in at an angle? These young dentists and their new-fangled technology!"

By this time, both my father and brother had had their wisdom teeth removed, and after much guilt-ridden self-talk, I decided to take the plunge and become the next wisdom toothless member of my family.

The funny thing about announcing to the world that you're finally getting your wisdom teeth out is that you're all of a sudden accepted into a secret society with all sorts of weird horror stories about the wisdom tooth extraction experience.

"I woke up half-way through my surgery and tried to tell them I could feel everything, but they wouldn't listen to me. They just continued like I was some experiment in a sci-fi movie!"

"I was given this pill that I was supposed to take two hours before the surgery. It didn't actually kick in until after the surgery, and I felt the whole thing. I threw up all day."

"The surgeon couldn't get my teeth out, they were so huge. He had to put his knee on my chest to pull them out. They won't do that to you. You're too little."

All of these stories are followed by, "That was just my experience. You'll be fine."

Two weeks ago, the reading specialist at my school got a phone call at work. Her son had just had a heart attack.

"He went in to get his wisdom teeth removed," the kindergarten teacher told me, " and he had a heart attack when they administered the sedative. He was only in his twenties."

"I'm getting my wisdom teeth out in two weeks."

"Oh . . . well . . . that won't happen to you. You'll be fine."

I cried pretty much all day before the surgery.

Of course, I was fine.

"I hope Dan had time to get breakfast," I told the nurse as she led me to the recovery room. "It only took five minutes."

"You've been here for an hour."

"Whaaat?"

"Even if you don't feel like it, you need to eat something," the nurse said as she laid me down.

"Oh, I feel like it!" I said through the gauze stuffed in my mouth. "I'm starving."

Dan said I rambled on in the car about being lucid and knowing what I was saying so he wouldn't be able to make fun of me.

"Oh good. I still have a tongue," I supposedly said looking in the car mirror and touching it with my fingers.

I also kept making Dan look in my mouth to make sure they had taken out all four teeth. I couldn't believe they had taken them all out in just five minutes.

Eventually, the sedative wore off, and I became less giddy. I slept the next day, and I did get a little sick from the antibiotics. Once the doctor gave me permission to go off of those, I was fine. My pain was minimal. I didn't even need to take much of the "good stuff" they gave me.

My only complaint is that I was under the impression that the swelling that accompanies wisdom tooth extraction would look like "chipmunk cheeks" which sounds a lot more attractive than the jowels I developed. Instead of resembling a cute, forest creature, I look more like The Incredible Hulk, or as Dan has nicknamed me, "The She-Hulk. She was hot!" Real comforting husband I have taking care of me.

How My Husband Almost Ended Up in the Doghouse This Holiday

This Christmas, I received a video that has been circulating the Internet entitled "Beware the Doghouse." Distributed by JC Penney, it is a four-plus minute advertisement promoting the department store's jewelry department.

The ad begins with a well-intentioned yet oblivious husband who gives his wife a vacuum cleaner for their anniversary. The wife sends him to the "Doghouse" where he encounters other husbands who have met a similar fate. One unfortunate confesses that he told his wife that her "mom looked hot in a bathing suit." Another presented his wife with an Abcisizer on Christmas Day, telling her, "Thought you'd want to tighten up that jelly belly!"

In the Doghouse, the men have to eat quiche and drink Chai lattes every night while awaiting their turn in front of a female review board. The clip closes with a photograph of the only woman who ever accepted her husband back. A close-up reveals a diamond necklace around her neck, apparently the husband's ticket out of the confinement. "Stay out of the Doghouse this holiday," the caption reads.

I laughed and laughed when watching this video for the first time . . . that is, until it became a reality.

On Christmas Day, my husband presented me with a Nintendo Wii Fit, a video game exercise program. This in itself was not enough to land him in the Doghouse. He knows I like to work out, and he has forever been trying to find Nintendo games for me, probably in order to alleviate the guilt that comes from spending many hours in front of the T.V. playing "Super Mario Galaxy" and "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess."

I was in no way offended by the implication that a gift such as a Wii Fit may connote - that I was in need of exercise.

So we set up the Wii Fit, eager to try it out. My enthusiasm didn't even wane when I stepped on the little white balance board and heard an electronic voice say, "Ooohhh," like an elephant had just climbed on board. But when the Wii calculated my BMI and my Mii character, an avatar-like creature with bobbed brown hair and freckles, grew shorter and chubbier before my eyes, Dan's time out of the Doghouse became dubious at best.

I should also add that when Dan stepped on the Wii board, the electronic voice said, "Great!" and when it calculated his BMI, his Mii character became taller and skinnier. When my Mii stands next to his Mii on the screen, my Mii looks like a beach ball.

The balance board then took me through various activities to calculate my Wii Fit Age. With every activity, the board ridiculed me.

"Walking's not your strong suit," it said. "Do you find yourself tripping when you walk?"

Dan snickered a bit from his perch on the living room couch and responded, "Yes, she does."

"The Agility test is not your strong suit," the balance board said. "Do you find your body isn't responding the way you want?"

Then there was a drum roll while my chubby Mii stood in a yellow spotlight, and the board presented me with my Wii Fit Age.

"40!" the screen read as my Mii bent over and rubbed her back. "That's a difference of +9 years. Your body's a lot weaker than it should be!"

"Don't worry," Dan said hastily. "You just have to get used to the games. I'm sure I won't do much better."

And to prove his point, he too took the Wii Fit Body Test.

"26!" the screen read as Dan's Mii jumped up and down with childlike agility. "That's a difference of -5 years . . . "

I sank onto the sofa and burst into tears.

"Don't cry," Dan hopped off the board and hurried over to me. "Oh no, don't cry. This was supposed to be fun for you! You'll get better at it, I promise."

He paused for a moment.

"I'm in the Doghouse, aren't I?"

Things have calmed down a bit since my first experience with my Christmas gift. I made a conscience decision not to allow the Wii Fit Balance Board determine my self-worth. I've learned to ignore comments made by the Wii such as, "The Steadiness Test isn't your strong suit. Do your find yourself controlling your movements with your eyes?" or "Too busy to work out, eh, Becky?"

Dan managed to stay out of the Doghouse this Christmas, although he occasionally has to be reminded of his precarious position.

"What? 28!" He exclaimed yesterday as his tall, skinny Mii youthfully bounced across the screen. "Last time, my Wii Fit age was 26!"

Then he glanced at me. I raised an eyebrow. He turned his gaze back to the T.V.

"Nevermind," he mumbled.