FUPS

Shannon's family has probably the greatest tradition ever conceived.

Shannon's mom is a kindergarten teacher. As such, she gets lots of gifts from students every Christmas, most of which are worthless pieces of junk. One night years ago, Shannon was helping her mom write thank-you notes for all these gifts and they stayed up for hours laughing at one particularly unfortunate Frosty the Snowman figurine. They dubbed him FUPS, for Frosty the Ugly Piece of Shit.

They were being pretty silly, and Shannon ended up dropping the thing, detaching its arm from its body. Her mom threw the figurine away, thinking that was the end of it.

That night, Shannon dug it out of the trash and put it under her mom's pillow with a note. Although no one spoke a word of it for the next several years, the game continued. Each family member who found FUPS in a most unexpected place would then hide him again.

Shannon has found FUPS in the wheel well of her car when she had to change a flat and outside the window of a new apartment the day after her parents helped her move in. She has personally hidden him in a carton of ice cream, which she had hollowed out, stuffed FUPS into, and packed ice cream back on top of.

On our trip to North Carolina last week, Brad and I were honored to become part of this grand tradition. Shannon's brother has moved to Chicago, and they feel that it is his turn to find FUPS. Mailing him is not an option, as a package mailed to you does not qualify as a "most unexpected place." Thus, Brad and I are going to place FUPS somewhere where Tim is guaranteed to find it. Shannon gave us the valet key to his car, so that will most likely be the easiest and most effective placement. But of course we now want to put our own special brand of creepy on it - perhaps with some sort of prop sticking out of FUPS' arm hole, or just a really creative location that will completely shock Tim. We shall see, we shall see...