I was raised by elves

I don't know where or how they first came into contact with it, but my kids love the movie Elf. Though I generally am quite a scrooge when it comes to the genre of stupid humor, I have found the movie strangely endearing. This week, while slicing apples by the fire with four of the men as we giggled at the October snow falling on the green trees, I realized that the movie Elf falls into a whole different category of movie for me.

You see, I was raised by elves. Apple elves, wood cutting elves, tree elves, garden elves, sweeping elves. They are very specialized. Six of them. Six elves instead of the seven dwarves. They are big elves. Everything they do has an assembly line/work for the joy of it, feel to it. Also – they strictly adhere to the Elves four major food groups of candy canes, syrup, candy corn, and... I forget the last one. It's a tough diet for aging pre-diabetics but they are faithful. And grumpy elves are hilarious. I feel bad for them – even when they really want to be ticked off – when you stand back and look at the situation the irony of it all is too much to even repress the smile. I mean, they really have plenty of things they could be angry about – like the fact that most of the world completely under appreciates and mocks them even though their main goal in life is to make the world a better place. But no, they never get mad about that. They just have melt downs over a bug that won't stop bothering them or the fact that they can't get the pumpkins picked because they are “running out of a day light”.

And I wish I were more like Buddy – taking my strange elf childhood of giving, sharing, joyfulness, playfulness, and assembly line skill out into the broader world. But I knew by a young age that I wasn't like them. I wasn't an elf. I wasn't handicapped. I was more. I could do more.

But now I know I can't. I know I am just not hilarious when I am grumpy, I have no team mentality, and I am not all about the joy. I always tell Jarod, when I completely disregard all sanitary protocol or social norms, “Hey, I really am far more normal than I have any right to be.”

I am so grumpy about my normalcy.

I hope that makes you laugh.

P.S. The other movies that fall into my strange genre of, “Could be a warped memoir of my strange life,” are:

I am Sam

As Good as it Gets

Dream Team

Ringer

Forest Gump

1 Corinthians 1:27

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.