A Christmas Carol With More Ghosts And Less Learning
Your past is a real buzzkill.
At the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, as snow fell outside my window and I contemplated how I couldn’t possibly improve as a human being, the Ghost of My Former Assistant, I Think His Name Was Jacob, visited me.
He warned me I’d be visited by other spirits. I said, “I hope one of them is Jose Cuervo.” He shook his head and vanished.
But darned if the ghost wasn’t right: as the clock struck one, I was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. He showed me scenes of my younger self missing opportunities to improve as a human being, like coughing up the money to attend UConn instead of settling for Fitchburg, not making my employees work on holidays, and not having a seventh mug of spiked eggnog earlier that night.
“Your past is a real buzzkill,” he concluded. “If I were you, I wouldn’t repeat it. Especially the eggnog. Know what’s going to haunt you next? Your cholesterol.”
The ghost took me back home. He lingered in my hallway until I gave him twenty bucks to haunt my ex-wife’s new boyfriend Adrian. The ghost thanked me and vanished. I took a leak, then went back to bed.
At two, the Ghost of Christmas Just A Few Minutes Ago materialized. He led me through moments that had…
