It’s Christmas Day, 20 years ago. My son is 6 years old and really into nature. Mom and dad both approve of this interest and I buy him an animatronic bird. Looks just like a real bird and supposedly would fly just like one. I take my son out to the backyard and I figure I’ll fly it the first time (just wind it up and throw it) then when he sees how it's done he could play with it. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course the bird flew just like a regular bird would, up and away and out of our lives forever. My poor kid never even got to touch the thing. I never really forgave myself.

It’s Secret Santa time, 2014. I made a lucky guess and was given some cool Reddit stickers and even cooler, was made an Elf for three months. So I was able to choose to be matched with another Elf (whose real name is Colby), who as it turns out was participating in his first exchange. This generous, wonderful, cheese named pointed-ear having bastard didn’t know any better and sent me far too much happiness, and just enough hedonistic mischief. Then shit got real.

The first box came and not only did I receive a bitchin’ fun version of Yahtzee mixed with The Walking Dead, but also some treats for my dogs, who are my best friends and love me unconditionally. They were very happy with their treats and showed their joy by slobbering all over my pants.

That would have been enough right there. That’s a quality Secret Santa gift and I’m happy as can be OR SO I THOUGHT. Colby saw some other interests of mine and set in motion a sequence of events that would culminate in a demon slaying.

The second box came and included some cool Game of Thrones magnets, some tasty jelly beans that I can’t eat because I try to stay away from processed sugar and will instead give to my little sister (it’s actually a snake in a can heh heh) and the demon slayer itself, a remote controlled quadcopter.

So my now grown-up son and his girlfriend come over and we stay up all night getting hammered and playing Walking Dead Yahtzee then the next morning my son and I take the quadcopter out to my backyard whereupon I ignore the fact that the controller looks like a PS4 controller, my son is the gamer with the skilled digits, not me – and that I owe him big time for being a bad dad twenty years ago. Screw it, I wanna go first. I turn on the controller, set the quadcopter on a bench and hit a toggle switch. The damn thing shoots straight up almost out of sight then when I try to correct it the jackass sails over the trees and disappears. I felt like the Oakland Raiders, it was terrible.

However my son the eternal optimist went searching for it and found it, stuck in a tree a block away. We freed it using the time tested method of throwing shit at it until so much shit was stuck in the tree it gave us back the ‘copter. We took it to the middle school which is literally a stone’s throw from my door and this time I let him play with it. I felt like a real dad.

Thanks Colby. The demon is dead and you have won Secret Santa 2014!!!11!!1