A Christmas Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

Barrymore’s wheezy, friendly old voice spoke kindly of Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim and the ghost of old Marley.
    The first package I grabbed was tagged “To Randy from Santa.” I feverishly passed it over to my brother, who always was a slow reader, and returned to work. Aha!
    “To Ralphie from Aunt Clara”—on a largish, lumpy, red-wrapped gift that I suspected to be the crummy football. Frantically I tore off the wrappings. Oh no! OH NO! A pair of fuzzy, pink, idiotic, cross-eyed, lop-eared bunny slippers! Aunt Clara had for years labored under the delusion that I was not only perpetually four years old but also a girl. My mother instantly added oil to the flames by saying:
    “Oh, aren’t they sweet! Aunt Clara always gives you the nicest presents. Put ’em on; see if they fit.”
    They did. Immediately my feet began to sweat as those two fluffy little bunnies with blue button eyes stared sappily up at me, and I knew that for at least two years I would have to wear them every time Aunt Clara visited us. I just hoped that Flick would never spot them, as the word of this humiliation could easily make life at Warren G. Harding School a veritable hell.
    Next to me in harness my kid brother silently, doggedly stripped package after package until he hit the zeppelin. It was the jackpot!
    “ WOW ! A ZEPPELIN! WHOOPEE! WOW!”
    Falling over sideways with an ear-splitting yell, he launched it upward into the middle branches of the tree. Two glass angels and a golden bugle crashed to the floor, and a string of lights winked out.
    “It’s not supposed to fly, you nut,” I said.
    “ AHH, WHAT GOOD IS A ZEPPELIN THAT DON’T FLY !?”
    “It rolls. And beeps.”
    Instantly he was on his knees pushing the Graf Zeppelin,beeping fiendishly, propellers clacking, across the living-room rug. It was a sound that was to become sickeningly familiar in the months ahead. I suspect even at that moment my mother knew that one day the zeppelin would mysteriously disappear, never to beep again.
    My father was on his feet with the first blink of the dying tree lights. He loved nothing better than to track down the continual short circuits and burned-out bulbs of Christmas tree light strings. Oblivious, I continued to ravage my gifts, feigning unalloyed joy at each lousy Sandy Andy, dump truck, and Monopoly game. My brother’s gift to me was the only bright spot in an otherwise remarkably mediocre haul: a rubber Frankenstein face which I knew would come in handy. I immediately put it on and, peering through the slit eyes, continued to open my booty.
    “Oh, how terrible!” my mother said. “Take it off and put it away.”
    “I think it looks good on him,” my father said. I stood up and did my already famous Frankenstein walk, clumping stiff-legged around the living room and back to the tree.
    Finally it was all over. There were no more mysterious packages under the tree, only a great pile of crumpled tissue paper, string, and empty boxes. In the excitement I had forgotten Red Ryder and the BB gun, but now it all came back. Skunked! Well, at least I had a Frankenstein face. And there was no denying that I had scored heavily with the Simoniz and the atomizer, as well as the zeppelin. The joy of giving can uplift the saddened heart.
    My brother lay dozing amid the rubble, the zeppelin clasped in one hand and his new fire truck in the other. My father bent over from his easy chair, his eighth glass of wine in his hand.
    “Say, don’t I see something over there stuck behind the drapes? Why, I think there
is
something over there behind the drapes.”
    He was right! There
was
a tiny flash of red under the ecru curtains. Like a shot I was off, and milliseconds later I knew that old Santa had come through! A long, heavy, red-wrapped package, marked “To Ralphie from Santa” had been left somehow behind the curtains. In an instant the wrappings were off, and there it was! A Red Ryder carbine-action range-model BB gun lay in its crinkly white