Mom's house, those chocolate cookies with powdered sugar on them, embarassing family pictures, elaborate meals. For several fleeting moments, you're ten years old again. You actually feel it. Why? It seems like every other year, but those visceral feelings of actually being back in time... What could be different?
Then, as you surf the news at Google [sure didn't have that when I was a kid!], and as you read the Times and the Guardian [that, either.], it breaks on you like a dawn. Something extra this year. It's a clock, alright, but not as in "clock, turning back the," more like "clock, doomsday."
What really makes you feel like you're ten again is the Doomsday Clock, the one your uptight Viet Nam vet civics teacher told you was inching perilously close to midnight. [Uptight? He'd blink hard a few times before answering a question, trying to hold it all together.] Go figure. Hadn't thought of that for a while.
Thank you, President Bush. And thank your friends. For a Christmas just like the ones I used to know.
