I wrote about this Lizard last year so if you can't remember what a flatten lizard with a red bow around his neck looks like check back in December 2012 blog posts. Any way, this lizard has traveled from house to house since it first arrived as a white elephant gift in Hong Kong over 20 years ago. The tradition is if you get the lizard you get a certain invitation to the next year's party. It works great IF we remember WHO has the lizard. Since living in Syracuse for so long it is a little hard to remember exactly who has it. So last year, I took a picture of who took it home to serve as a reminder to us. That was to avoid the embarrassment we had to deal with last year calling people to find it!
Good plan....... (you know what could happen with plans, right?)
In September sometime, we ran into some good friends who live in another ward but often come to our Christmas parties over the years. They reminded us that they had the lizard and they were looking forward to coming to the party that year. I was surprised as I had thought another couple had it, but they were so confident that I just assumed they had it.
A few months later, we saw him again and he talked again about the lizard. They were in the process of moving out to his childhood home he said but they definitely would be at the party with the lizard despite the move. We were fine with that and again didn't worry about it.
We set the party for the first Saturday of the month and were busy with planning, We couldn't get them a physical invitation due to their move, but sent them an email and hoped they would be there. The day of the party Gary heard from them. They were coming to the party BUT they couldn't find the famous LIZARD. She was sure that she had packed it carefully when she packed up their master bedroom. They had spent Friday evening checking all of the boxes with no luck. They would keep looking but they wanted to know what they should do. Gary laughed and then said that he was sure they would find it, but a picture would be fine as a replacement for the night. We got a laugh about that....that would be a fun story to add to the history of the lizard.
Four hours later, I got a call from the wife (I am leaving the names off so they won't be tormented by the neighborhood :) ). She asked me if I had a picture of the lizard. She said that she had spent time online trying to google any descriptors she could think of and although she had seen a lot of "yucky" stuff, nothing that looked like our lizard. I could only imagine what "Chinese flatten lizards" and different similar words would bring up in online searching---I have lived in Hong Kong and been to China!
Anyway, I remembered that I had posted a picture on the blog one Christmas so I search for it (found it in 2012) and then went to my photo files to find it. The plan was for me to email it to her so that she could print it and wrap it for the party. As I looked through my folder, I found the lizard and right next to it a picture of the couple who had taken it home last year.....and it wasn't this couple. They had thought they were the ones but they weren't. I was laughing so hard I could barely tell Gary. We called the other couple and sure enough they had it (luckily we had invited them this year since we didn't actually remember that they had it.). We debated for a minute whether we would call the other couple and let them off the hook but decided we would. We didn't want them to waste time looking for it. All four of us had a great laugh about the whole situation.
Sidenote: We didn't mention it to the party at large and our friends said they spent all the party wondering when we were going to share their silly story. They ended up sharing it themselves with some of the people at the end of the night. They said it is their new strategy to be invited each year---just make the Halls THINK you have the lizard.
The party was fun as usual. We played "Reverse Charades (Christmas phrases, songs, and movies)", 'Getting to Know you " game, and the clapping game where each person is a different "action" representing something related to Christmas, in addition to the white elephant game.
No comments:
Post a Comment