First time in my life that I hardly noticed Christmas pass by. First Christmas that my family didn't have the traditional Christmas dinner. First time my mother cooked a salty spaghetti.

It took me a while to realize it was Christmas. It was the next door kids, they were singing christmas carols outside as I watch them from the window and I began to imagine how Christmas used to exhilirate me when I was younger and I thought, maybe what they're telling us is true- Christmas is only for kids, and as you grow older, the world gets harsher and you won't notice anymore the simple things that makes you happy once in your life.

I was manning the store when the clock strucked twelve. I couldn't believe my father didn't want to close it down down on Christmas Eve and he needed someone to watch it for him and this time, I was his best pick. My sister also had her first Christmas outside the house. She is working at a Japanese Restaurant in Glorietta which apparently don't give Christmas offs.

While I was in the store, I'm sure my parents were fighting back in the house. I heard them arguing about something earlier. My father wanted his constituents (who, through his oh goodness, got to have a land of their own in our place. I'm not talking about just one family. I'm actually talking about a community here and my father just loves them, or maybe he's investing too much to provide for his own future interests. He is a frustrated politician.) to celebrate Christmas in the house which my mother strongly refused. We all know very well how those people drink to death. They are a bunch of filthy drunkards who in some times wet themselves to whatever they were sitting at when they get really intoxicated. My mother wanted to celebrate Christmas exclusively with the family.

At 1 am my father arrived and I had to drink with my cousins (who were never really close to me) for a while before they let me go. I didn't go directly to the house because I felt sure everyone's getting to bed already so I looked for Muriel. I found her with Randy and the other pals near the billiard station. I joined them in beer-drinking and didn't go home before 5.

I used the back door to get in the house. It was bad enough that we didn't have dinner together without my mother knowing that I looked for Christmas somewhere else. I have decided to tell the first one that would ask me in the morning that it was he/she who opened the door for me and accuse him/her of sleep walking. I sat in the table alone, pretending they were not sleeping and they were having dinner with me but it was hard, Mama must have been really angry with Papa, I used to love the way she cooked my spaghetti, but this time it was way too salty and I ended throwing up my Christmas dinner. The first spaghetti I disliked in my life.