A Christmas Tale by Life Explained. Part 1

In the spirit of Christmas we, here at Life Explained OH (LEOHNO) have decided to remake the Christmas Carol. We realize there is no way to improve on the writing of someone so talented, and universally esteemed as Charles Dickens, but what the heck, at least we don't have to come up with our own ideas that way.

This may run into several parts, and it may never end, kind of like the Presidential election cycle. So stay tuned.

A Christmas Carol remake.

Eddie ran a small retail shop. Selling shirts, snacks, drinks, hats, almost anything that didn't require a special license. Except cigarettes, he had a license for that, and made big money selling those. Sometimes he didn't even ask for an ID. Not always, it depended on the balance sheet.

It was a small store, in a big building between two department stores, and a mall. The location was perfect. People would see the signs advertising cheap smokes and $1.00 sunglasses in bright green and red looked almost festive. People would stop in for a bottle of water or a candy

He didn't own it, he just "managed" the shop. It was owned by a huge, soulless conglomerate with clawed, unscrupulous tentacles that ran through the very core of society. Giganticore sold cigarettes, chemotherapy treatments and coffins. They owned ice cream shops, bakeries, and weight watchers. They were everywhere.

And Eddie and the corporation loved Christmas, not the holiday, of course, the profits. 

Eddie hired his Mother, his sister, his brother in law and their daughter to work in the shop, and paid them less than minimum wage, unreported, so he had no withholding taxes, and didn't need to pay overtime. 

Eddie and the corporation loved family. 

On Thanksgiving Eddie made the family come to the shop and set up all the sales, rotate the end caps, change the prices, clean from top to bottom, fold the shirts, dust, mop, sticker, and toil. Then for

Thanksgiving dinner he made TV dinners,in the microwave, at the shop, so they would only have to stop working long enough to enjoy the salty, homogeneous tasting items on the cheap cardboard trays.

Eddie talked, during dinner about the importance of being together for the holidays. "Family is everything," he said holding an orange enchilada drooping over a plastic fork. "If it weren't for family we would be like animals, just walking around without a job, and doing nothing to improve the world. Now let's all get back to work. That shelf looks like Santa dropped a dirt bomb on it."

Eddie and his family toiled long into the cold, bleak night. Making the little shop shine like the Star in the East.

By the time they opened the shop at 4:00 in the morning the sweaty smell of hard labor would be gone.




Tune in tomorrow, for "The gods of Christmas Past visit Eddie in his small apartment" or "Hey, would you keep it down with special effects, we're trying to get some sleep here!"

 Spoiler alert, there will be lightning, thunder, and Eddie will lose a toe nail.