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The not-so-merry Christmas

Bob NilesTake a look at a popular doll 50 years from now.

"Yes, it's in the original box, and some 40 years ago, it may have been valuable. But so many of the Frozen dolls were sold and unopened that they have, unfortunately for you, flooded the market. It's probably not worth what you paid for it. But thank you for coming to the Antiques Road Show today."

I can see it all now! Doll after doll, action figure after action figure, all still hermetically sealed in the boxes they came in, will flood 85 percent of the antique market in the future. And why is that? Because adults could never could get them out of the dang blasted box!

You can't even call it a box. It's an environment. Little Elsa is frozen in time and space. All entombed by a blister pack and then tied, taped and suspended into a winter wonderland. Each arm and leg, neck and torso are painstakingly tied from the back of the plasticized cardboard scene. And each tie is then taped as if to make sure she can't get away. Then the cardboard environment is placed in an equally attractive windowed box that is sealed with far too many pieces of invisible tape.

It would be easier to get a guy out of Guantanamo Bay prison than this doll from that box. A box that has become the prison she's attached to. A box so incased in plastic that it would seem that this toy's country of origin (China) is ridding itself of non-recycleable plastic by plasticizing everything it exports to a ridiculous degree.

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It all starts with the windowed box. And every one of them is different. You push, then pull on spots where you think would be an entry point, but you're wrong. Flaps are discovered for access where only an Ikea designer would think to look.

More pushing, pulling and then discovering the flaps are covered in invisible tape. You pick away the tape from the three flaps, then discover there are four flaps. It's after you attack the fourth flap with barred nails and flashing teeth that you're made painfully aware that they've taped all the edges, too. It looks as though they were trying to rid the factory of all invisible tape.

Success! Windowed box breached. Consider yourself proud for having achieved this level in entering its plastic domain on the same day and without swearing.

But describing it as a plastic domain isn't entirely correct. It must be a carbon fiber/plastic domain. Because you can't rip it, or bite your way through it like you could do if it were plastic. You need German steel found only in your wife's expensive kitchen knives. These have to be sharpened to an operating room's edge to gain entry into this gilded prison. Plus you have to back up your blade with wire snips and scissors as your tools of the trade to unlock toys on Christmas Day.

The physical properties of the carbon fiber/plastic prison change when stabbed. At first, you push and push with the blade, careful not to bend it too much as to break its point off. You know the tip will break because you've done it to three knives already. Then, once through the plastic, it's like a hot knife through butter. And now the stabbing blade is coming directly at the place where you plan on digesting a pound and a half of turkey later that day. But wait, you're saved! Saved from a self appendectomy by the carbon fiber/plastic cardboard that's prisoning Elsa. It's now that the once-hot-knife-through-butter scenario changes. Using the knife to free little Elsa from her plastic cell is like trying to cut tough leather with a dull hammer. Why?

You now try birthing the toy by pulling it through the hole you've made with the pointless knife. You yank on her blond hair, head and arms with the two fingers you can fit in the hole. No luck! Elsa is still a prisoner and you're cut up from the carbon fiber/plastic edges, bleeding all over Christmas. It's then you discover little Charlotte's toy is wired and tied half a dozen times to the cardboard.

At this point you want to swear. You should swear. You've sworn at less. But you're surrounded by children and elderly relatives and dear old mom. So you bite your tongue and smile. And it's through that smile you note that each knot and twist are then blessed with more of the almost invisible tape. To which you then remember Jesus at Christmas by audibly but unknowingly asking him for help.

And so it is with bared teeth, nails and divine help that more dang blasted tape is removed.

With the attention of one disarming a bomb, you note the wire or twine. If she's just tied with twine, you can use scissors to free her from her six anchoring points.

Please note: Scissors, not a knife, are to be used here. Some years ago I used a knife and wound up looking like Jack Nicholson in the movie "Chinatown."

If plasticized wire is assessed, you could try twisting it counter clockwise. And if that doesn't work, clockwise. Then repeat. And repeat. Then you swear. You don't care who's in the room at this point.

Help is now required to gain entry into poor little Elsa's toy prison. You ask some relative's kid named Bobby to go to the garage and get the wire snips from your toolbox. Then after four unsuccessful trips ("Are you kidding me?), you pull yourself up with the help of the Christmas tree, which goes quickly from vertical to horizontal, to retrieve them yourself.

Snips acquired and tree righted, you cut the six anchoring points and the left hand off the once treasured Elsa doll.

Now the blond curly-haired, seemingly angelic, patiently waiting for her doll, Charlotte, swears. This brings the total to four people with potty mouths today. Myself, the wife when I pulled the tree over, the not-so-angelic Charlotte and Mr. "Are you kidding me?" when I yelled at him for not being able to find the snips.

Right-handed Elsa is now free. But by this time the family has found someone else to carve your turkey, and everyone has abandoned you. The whole bunch of turkey-eating unbelievers who thought I couldn't free Elsa before dinner had started eating without me.

Well, I showed them. At least one toy is freed. Four more to go.

"Hey! You turkey-eating unbelievers, do I recycle this carbon fiber/plastic cardboard or just throw it away? Someone? Anyone? No, really, where does it go?

Are you kidding me? That was really rude."

- Bob Niles

Bob Niles, who answers to Robert, Bobby, Dad, Grandpa, Unit No.2 (his Dad could never remember all the children's names), honey and super hero, is new to writing but not to storytelling. "I like to make people laugh and to think, with a secret desire make them dance and send me untraceable $100 bills in the mail," says the happily married, retired father and grandpa from Richmond in British Columbia, Canada. He blogs here.

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