Gift En Pointe

The Christmas ornament exchange was its usual great success at the conclusion of the annual company Christmas party, except for one thing:

That thing being a brightly wrapped box with a big sliver bow sitting all by its lonesome on the gift table.

"We never have an ornament left over," said the company president.

His loyal employees all agreed.

There was never a gift left over because the rules of the ornament exchange specifically stipulated that each employee bring one wrapped ornament to be exchanged for the one wrapped ornament that each would claim during the exchange. It was a zero sum game every year.

Except that this year there was that brightly wrapped box with the big silver bow.

"Well," said the first vice president, "somebody should open it. Don't you think?"

Everyone agreed, but everyone was afraid to open it, because, well, because it was unprecedented to have a gift left over.

"All right," the second vice president said, "who's playing the practical joke here? Who slipped an extra gift on the table while no one was looking?"

No one spoke.

Instead they all just looked at one another and then at the last, lonely gift on the table.

Finally, Fred from finance said, "All right, I'll open it."

And he did.

And what did their wondering eyes behold but a perfectly proportioned porcelain ballerina en pointe. Which is to say, the precious likeness of a living, breathing ballerina from say, 1954, was poised on the point of her left foot while her right leg was extended in a perfect horizontal plane. It was a position humanly possible only for those humans who had exerted super-human effort to master the nearly impossible art of ballet.

Then, as the Christmas lights shimmered, the precious porcelain ballerina sprouted gossamer wings and flew in perfect pirouettes above and beyond the wondering eyes of her blessed company. She swirled and dipped and turned and then she was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

There was not a dry eye in the restaurant that cold, dark December night, because the company had lost their very own ballerina and company founder that very year.

She was their ballerina, and, oh, how she had loved the annual company Christmas dinner and ornament exchange.

Sandra from sales was finally able to say: "Do you suppose that was her, and she was'""

But Madam Founder had made her point, and in the flutter of an angel's wings, they all knew that their dearly departed ballerina was happily performing perfect pirouettes on Pluto in the company of angels.