Tales of Christmases Past

Alfie wears clothes that are a little weird. He never goes out of doors without his night cap on. I don’t know if he wears it to bed or not, but he always has it on in the daytime. He wears a sweatshirt that is so big you would never know if he has all his fingers or not because the sleeves hang down so long they cover his hands. He picks things up through his sleeves, like he had on a pair of mittens. You can see that he is absolutely useless for picking up small things like screws, nails, and such. His pants are likewise about four sizes too large. He wears holes in the backs of his pant legs about six inches above the cuff. This is because his pants extend out over his shoes. When he takes a step his heel comes down first. Since it's up inside his pant leg it wears a hole less than a day after he first puts on a new pair of pants …He uses the hole to hang his pants on a peg, upside down, whenever he’s not in them… Most of the time he has a silly grin on his face. If you look at him he blushes. When he’s embarrassed he hangs his hands down in front of him, holds one hand in the other, bends his arms inside out at the elbows, and swings his hands from one side to another. Not only is Alfie short in stature, he’s a little short between the ears as well, if you know what I mean. So he frequently does things that make the rest of us shake our heads in amazement. I’ll give you a couple of examples. One day shortly after he came to work in our section I gave him a tray full of beautiful porcelain heads, all finished and ready to be attached to doll bodies. I showed him where the body department was and asked him to hurry the tray over there, since they were nearly out of finished heads. Alfie took off at a dead run, took three steps, stepped on one pant leg with the opposite foot and landed, splat, right on his tummy. The tray slammed to the floor, there was a loud crash and when the dust settled there were pieces of broken porcelain scattered over the floor. Four or five of the heads escaped breaking and rolled away under various articles of furniture. Next thing I knew Alfie was on his hands and knees reaching under work benches and stools, retrieving the wayward heads. Then he sat, looking up at me with his goofy grin, holding two heads by the hair in one hand and three in the other, through his sleeves of course. He looked every bit like a dwarflike Blue Beard holding up the severed heads of his murdered wives. That was the day I learned never to let Alfie get his sleeved hands on any of our finished product. Another day, we were all standing around the workbench of Lefty, the left-handed Leprechaun from Killkenny, Ireland. Lefty had just finished such a beautiful face on a doll head that all of us had to take time out to admire his work. All, that is, except Alfie. He was too short to see, too shy to force his way between someone’s legs, so he was left out. It didn’t take Alfie long, however, to discover that someone had left a pallet loaded with supplies, on a push cart right behind where we all were standing. Alfie spotted a large wooden barrel on the cart, and quick as could be he clambered up to stand on top of it and look over our shoulders. He’d no sooner arranged himself on his perch than the lid on the barrel tilted, slid to the side and dropped Alfie feet first down into a barrel full of sorghum molasses. When I turned around to see what was causing the commotion, there was Alfie, dumb grin and all, up to his neck in molasses. Before anyone could think how to help him out with getting all stuck up, Alfie took matters in his own hands (or sleeves). He reached up to where he could barely reach a shelf just above his head. He put his other elbow on the lip of the barrel and succeeded in hoisting himself up till he could sit on the edge of the barrel. Molasses dripped off him and ran down the outside of the barrel, over the edge of the cart, and formed a puddle on the workshop floor. Alfie wasn’t through yet. He reached up to the shelf again, but, being taller now than when he was down in the barrel, he overreached. He grabbed on to the edge of a plastic bucket full of goose down feathers we use to edge doll dresses. Down came the bucket, spilling its contents all over Alfie, then landing upside down on his head. Losing his balance, Alfie toppled over, off the barrel, landed on his back on the floor. From head to toe he was covered with goose down and molasses, and with the bucket on his head he thought the lights had gone out. It took us some time to get Alfie cleaned up. Needless to say, when Santa took a look at production figures for that day he wasn’t too pleased. The Doll Section didn’t do much for the bottom line. I think you get the idea. We had to be careful where we put Alfie, and he could not be assigned to just any task. Now, back to my story.