There we were, sitting around, not a Christmas tree, but a pile of legal papers. We scarcely had a month left until trial so we certainly weren’t going to let something as simple as the holidays slow us down. Write. Rewrite. Write again. On and on we went as the midnight snow turned into morning dew. 

Just as we started to clear our papers and prepared to brave the blue chill of the outside tundra, we noticed that one person was staying behind: our coach Mr Struble. Just one more thing needed to be rewritten. He insisted we should all go along without him. So off we went to scrape the ice off our cars as Mr Struble was left, a sole light in the frozen library. 

It must have been the spirit of Christmas bubbling up inside, but we felt as though we had to express our gratitude to Mr Struble for all the hard work and time he donated to us. Of course though, Mr Struble was far too humble to ever just accept a gift, so we came up with a new plan.

Our plan was simple, rather than getting a gift for Mr Struble, we would have plausible deniability and get a gift for his wife, the much kinder Mrs Struble. Unfortunately, we just didn’t know what to get her. 

And so, the plan evolved. We unearthed the ancient texts of the previous year’s GroupMe in order to relearn long forgotten knowledge. Ella Struble’s phone number. Lo, the ritual chant was recited, “Hey Ella, what’s your mom’s favorite color?” and the race was off.

Blue. That was the response, and that was what we would use. We went to Target and bought three blue baskets. Sprinting around the store we found every other blue thing that was tangentially of value. Blue wrapped hershey kisses? Throw them in. Blue dog toys? Sure, they have a dog. Anything and everything.

The final stop, the delivery. It was my job to ensure that the baskets actually arrived at Mrs Struble’s house, so I loaded them up in Barry’s passenger seat and set off. It took about ten minutes of driving before I finally pulled off on the side of the road. I had no clue where I was going.

I texted everyone who I thought would know where on earth these people lived, and got no response. Uh oh. Here I was stranded in my bright yellow car, sitting in some stranger’s driveway. Then, I came up with an idea. I knew someone who used to live near the Struble’s house, so if I just mapped myself there.

It only took me about twenty minutes to do an eight minute drive, but I finally found their house. I grabbed the three baskets with only two hands and walked over to their front door. I set them down on the porch and went to ring the doorbell. This turned out to be a much harder task, but eventually after rearranging half their front door, I found and rang the doorbell.

I scampered off as quickly as I could and hopped into my bright yellow car. Vroom, I took off down the road to get out of there. As I sped down the road, I glanced back to find that Mr. Struble had already checked the door and was staring right at my car recklessly driving down the road. As I glanced back I suddenly realized there was a mail truck right where my car was going. I swerved my wheel to the left to dodge it only to find a stop sign, and on the other side of that stop sign was a car heading right towards me. 

I ran that stop sign and bolted out of there. Now, did I get lost in the neighborhood for another ten minutes? Perhaps. But did I successfully deliver a Christmas package to our Mock Trial coach’s wife? Absolutely, and isn’t that the true meaning of Christmas.