# Bad,bad,bad christmas thread

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-bad-bad-christmas-thread/844721>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [December 11, 2019, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-bad-bad-christmas-thread/844721 "2019-12-11T19:35:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 20

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**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2019, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-bad-bad-christmas-thread/844721/20 "2019-12-12T12:26:50Z")

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> [@RioRico](#):
>
> My best Xmas involved underage incest so I’ll skip that here.

That sounds bad, bad, bad indeed! :eek: Miss **beckdawrek** would be proud!

Can we include our bad, bad, bad New Year stories in this thread too?

Okay, here’s my cool, cool, cool Christmas story. Did I mention just recently that I worked (and lived) at a research lab with dolphins in Honolulu? Yes, I did:

> [@Blow Holes](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blow-holes/844480/9):
>
> As I heard it described once, the entire “melon” is just the whale’s or dolphin’s upper lip!
> 
> – Senegoid  
> [Former dolphin research lab assistant, trainer](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0010027784900039),  
> former member [IMATA](https://www.imata.org) (Int’l Marine Animal Trainers’ Ass’n)  
> [Charter member, Society of Marine Mammology](https://www.marinemammalscience.org/about-us/history/)

I was there from 1980 to 1984. The lab was staffed by a director, two associate directors, several grad students (two of whom also lived at the lab), and a bunch of volunteers. I was a part-time mostly volunteer. For the Christmas break, everybody tended to go home to wherever they really lived. Even the upper-level staff, who lived locally, weren’t around much. Just me. I had nowhere else to go.

So, on Christmas Day (1981 I think, maybe 1982) I was there all alone, just me and two dolphins, on Christmas Day. I thawed out the frozen fish and fed them, morning and afternoon. This was all outdoors in a pouring rainstorm, and all I was wearing was swimming trunks and sandals. Feeding is a time-consuming process, as a meal consisted of 40 or so fish for each dolphin, hand-fed one fish at a time.

Being out in the rain like that on Christmas Day is cool, but in Hawaii that’s not too bad. It was comfortably cool, not bone-chilling cold. That’s about as cold as it ever gets in Hawaii, even in the winter rain.

[Here’s a pic by the way](http://doggie.freeshell.org/pictures/dolphin.jpg), taken in somewhat brighter weather.

Next up: Okay, I’ll tell you about my bad, bad, bad New Year stories.

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