We’re painting the kids’ rooms with them this Christmas Vacation, and for two good reasons: 1) It’s important to give them a sense of pride and partnership in their spaces, and 2) I’m stupid.

Well, not any more stupid than usual, I guess, but here’s the thing: After working out and taking one to a baseball thing this morning, I started with my wife on the priming and remembered…

After the earthquake of 1994, what they call the Northridge Quake, we had a bunch of damage. The results were different, literally block to block (like tornadoes), and we have nothing to complain about, especially since a young couple was killed on our block.

They were married just a year (like us, at that point), and the quake happened just before five in the morning, and their house slid down the hill. They had a dog, which survived, but they were killed. That’s when I started putting a piece in my act about how “Dogs always know before the quake, but, unfortunately, all we do is say, ‘STOP THAT. DO YOU WANT TO GO OUTSIDE? BECAUSE I’ll SEND YOU OUTSIDE. FINE, THEN, GO OUTSIDE.’” And how the next day, at the park, all the dogs are saying, “Did you try to warn them?” “Oh, yeah, but they gave me that ‘Go outside’ stuff.”

There’s a good and wholesome connection between comedy and drama if we’ll only see it.

So here’s the thing: Our house had some damage, but nothing crucial, but we lost all sorts of — well, everything, dishes, vases, anything that wasn’t tied down, all the wedding china (It still bothers me that we even call our fancy dishes “china”, by the way), and it was before we had kids, and power was off, and all the stuff in the ‘fridge exploded, and we were knee-deep in chards and matter, but there was one thing…

ONE THING… that was whole and untouched.

A giant gift bottle of vodka.

So we started sweeping and picking pieces out of this and that, and there was nothing to eat, and neighbors were walking around, and everyone was chopping trees off of this and that.

And every hour, on the hour, we took that bottle of vodka out on the street, and everyone had a drink together. And then we all went back inside and kept cleaning. And then we had another shot. And kept cleaning.

And by four or five, no one had anything to eat, and we were all — oh, what’s the word… DRUNK — and we all walked down to the boulevard, and nothing was open except one restaurant.

Want to guess? I’ll bet you can. Who are the only ones who opened up? Who are the only ones who came in? Who are the only ones who are so thrilled to be in America they would walk through fire to work? Who are the only people who take all natural disasters like swatting a fly away? What was the only restaurant open?

Chinese. And we all ate Chinese.

So today, when The Divine Mrs. M. and I started priming and rolling and heaving, since it’s Christmas Vacation, and there’s no official work, and the world has kind of stopped, we hadn’t had breakfast yet, and after an hour or so of grunting and wiping hands and faces, I turned to my wife and said, “Hey, you know what? Go down and get a bottle of Tullamore Dew and we’ll make some Irish Coffees. Just like after the quake.”

And she laughed and did. And now, at 4:30 in the afternoon, as I’m writing this before going back to paint, half the room looks really very good, and half looks like Jackson Pollock, but only his early work.

How lucky we are to laugh like that, right folks? For many years after that couple died, someone left two roses in the County lock on the the fence that was put up outside their crushed house; just two. Every week. Then they just stopped. There haven’t been roses for a long time.

REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY AND YOUR HOUSE WAS STILL STANDING, THE GAME’S OVER, AND GO MAKE YOURSELF AN IRISH COFFEE.