I left a poetry ransom note for Herald reporter Deb Nicklay last week saying that I’d stolen her tape. Then I forgot to actually steal her tape.

No, I haven’t dabbled in thievery this year. This was part of my 2016 secret Santa plan and a bit of biting proof that I bit off a bit more than I could properly chew with my holiday plans this years.

So this week’s column is a holiday confession.

First, I wrote a few weeks ago about putting thought and effort into holiday gifts. As I’m writing this in the days leading to Christmas, I’m fully realizing that doing that requires one key ingredient: time — and lots of it.

Secret Santa 2016 has been blunt proof of this. To give you a bit of background: I’m the weird one when it comes to secret Santa at the Austin Daily Herald. Leading up the Christmas of 2014, I found myself bored with the secret Santa process.

That year, I had circulation director Sherri Thissen, who is fan of cats and a pet owner. I got the idea to make her a book of cat poetry (I don’t know how my brain works; I just have to live with it). So I converted several classic, beloved poems into cat poems in an edition entitled “Where the Kitten Ends & other Poems” (Yes, I remade “Where the Sidewalk Ends” in a kitten book — it was actually a tad “deep.”

Then last year, I made my coworker Heather Ryks the book “A Gentlewoman’s Guide to Great Mustaches.”

Apparently, this earned me a reputation in the office. Sherri told me I should do secret Santa consulting, and Heather asked what I was going to do this year.

I joked with Heather in the break room about something like, “I don’t know; maybe I’ll just steal stuff from her desk and leave ransom notes.”

So then I did it.

With the first ransom note, I took her Kleenex box and left an intimidating note of rhyming poetry — it even rhymed Santa with Fanta and urged her not to go to the cops (I know, this column is getting pretty PG-13).

A few days later, Herald photographer Eric Johnson came up to me and asked, “Do you have Deb for secret Santa?”

And then he declared that no one else at the Herald would leave someone poetry for secret Santa … or probably anything. I took it as a compliment, and I’m assuming that’s exactly how Eric meant it.

Anyway, I had an escalating plan for more and more extreme office “thefts” and then I decided to tame it for a variety of reasons.

Chiefly, I feel like I woke up one day and bam, it was Christmas week. Let’s be honest: I did this to myself by setting lofty — too lofty — of goals. I decided also to make something for my nieces that is taking a good chunk of time and then something for my girlfriend. Apologies to Deb, the Herald and secret Santas everywhere, but my girlfriend and nieces took priority over the Herald’s secret Santa.

But, I still had fun with this holiday weirdness, and I hope Deb had a little too — and I hope poor Sherri and Heather did too.

And to celebrate, here are a few sneak peaks of 2014’s “Where the Kitten Ends.” If you didn’t think I was weird before, you likely will now.
2014 secret Santa poems adapted by Jason Schoonover for Sherri Thissen
The Red Tabby Cat

By William Catlos Williams (Adapted from “The Red Wheel Barrow” by William Carlos Williams)
so much depends

upon
a red

tabby cat
glazed with

grumpiness
beside the white

kittens.
In a Station

of the Mouser

By Ezra Meow (Adapted from “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound.

The apparition of these kittens in the crowd;

Whiskers on a wet, black paw.
The String

Not Played With

By Feline Frost (Adapted from “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost)

Two strings diverged from a yellow hood,

And sorry I could not play with both

And being one kitten, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the hooded cloth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was ragged and wanted wear;

Though as for that the playing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

On shoulders no paw had trodden slack.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two strings diverged from a hood, and I—

I took the one less unraveled by,

And that has made all the difference.
Where the Kitten Ends

By Shel Kittenstien (Adapted from “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstien

There is a place where the kitten ends

And before the cat begins,

And there the fur grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird becomes the bite

Swallowed in a peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark tail winds and bends.

Past the box where all the kitties go.

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the kitten ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The time when the kitten ends.