My first Christmas in Houston was predominantly dreadful. Other than my grand-parents visiting, everything else sucked. I didn’t like the private high school I was attending. I didn’t have any friends who lived close by. My grades were mediocre. I missed Springfield. On and on it went. It was the first time I really hated the Holiday Break. How I wished it would end quickly because it was a miserable time despite the gifts and improved prosperity.
Then the party in July 1983 put my head on straight and I took advantage of the clean slate Clear Creek offered. My grades were great. Most of the kids in the neighborhood went to my school. Mom and Dad didn’t mind dropping me off at Bayshore Mall on Saturday afternoons because my homework was done on time. I even had tickets to the upcoming Genesis concert in January! My life had done a complete 180. Now if the girl I liked (Angie) could stop being grounded for crummy grades, it would’ve been perfect (whether or not she’d go out with me was another matter).
The two weeks off for Break were going to rock. I wasn’t worried about final exams happening when school resumed. (Normally, these would’ve taken place before the Break but Hurricane Alicia pushed everything back a week.) I felt pretty confident about everything I was taking thanks to the easier grading scale in public school.
My grandparents repeated their holiday stay at our house too, only this time they knew to leave before January was over. Regardless, it was great to see them again and maintain the “continuity” I mentioned in 1982.
Again, everything was coming together to make 1983 the best Christmas Break since we lived in Central Illinois.
Too bad the weather didn’t get the memo. Christmas morning was so darned cold it felt like we were back in our old Springfield house and the radiators were offline. Plumbers and the utility companies were scrambling all over Houston to fix bursting pipes, many they probably had repaired earlier in the aftermath of Alicia.
Sadly, the cold snap overshadows my memories of those two weeks. I only remember one gift I received, an adventure for Star Frontiers from Brian. More D&D stuff was normally what I would get but my parents took the collection away in the Fall with a bullshit excuse reminiscent of the outgoing Bush administration. How I wish I recalled what everyone else’s presents were though.
Other than the weather, the rest of the time off was probably spent cooped up in my room listening to KLOL and reading sci-fi novels, primarily Gordon R Dickson’s Dorsai-related books. It wasn’t terribly different than when school was in, I just did it for longer stretches of time while my grandparents monopolized the TV.
This tale seems to come off like 1983 was another bitter Christmas for me yet it really wasn’t. Christmas just transformed into a dull, uneventful stretch of two weeks without school. I should’ve taken it as practice for relaxing during college breaks. Besides, Houston’s geographical location salvaged the new year period. The cold snap ran its course of five days and then the temperature rose back to levels that Midwesterners only dreamed of for January (or they spend Winter in Florida). It strengthened my love of Houston because I never needed to wear heavy winter clothing to school, the arcade, etc. Had I known we’d be moving to India-no-place in two months, I might have lived it up more in the “tropical” weather.
Thus 1983 marked the end of enjoying Christmas Break like a kid and experiencing it more like a teenager or an adult, unless one is filthy rich.