BIRTHDAY BASH

That’s what they call it. This is now the third year that we have had this event at the clubhouse. It starts off with a potluck dinner. Everybody brings a little something, and it’s amazing the variety of food we have. Then we have the White Elephant Gift Exchange. Everyone who wants to participate brings some kind of gift very neatly wrapped in a brown paper bag. (I did see one white bag.) We are seated in a big circle, and all these lovely “gifts” are placed in the center. These are the rules: The one running the show picks a person to start things off, and that individual goes and picks one of the bags. No peeking or rummaging around allowed. Then that person opens and displays the gift, and places it on the ground in plain sight.

We move around the circle counter-clockwise, so the next person repeats what the first one did. The difference is that the second person may keep the one picked, or swap with the first person, placing it in full view on the ground. And so it goes around the circle, with each succeeding person either keeping the chosen gift, or swapping with any opened gift.

I was about fifth or sixth in the rotation. The person two to my left happened to get a rather nice looking clock. The fellow next to me swapped for the clock. My turn. My gift turned out to be some stationery. I swapped it for the clock. Two persons later the guy swapped his bedroom slippers for the clock. Pretty good exchange, except the slippers were only about three sizes too big for me. But Cliff lucked out -- the slippers fit him just fine! I hope that clock had working parts.

Humor -

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