Each December, I go to the seasonal Hickory Farms kiosk at Crystal Mall in the hopes they'll have resurrected their immortal Ham Stick. The Ham Stick was, perhaps obviously, a porky replication of their signature Summer Sausage Stick — and my cardiologist would always send me a jocular warning around Dec. 10 saying, "Do NOT eat more than four of the Hillshire Farms Ham Sticks or I'll be zipping up your body bag before Santa finishes loading his sleigh!"

No worries, doc! For reasons that evade me, Hickory Farms quit making the Ham Stick a few years back. Still, to paraphrase Dickinson, "Hope is a Ham Stick," and so early December found me once again in Crystal Mall, peering futilely at the Hillshire Farms booth for something that, like the Wondiwoi tree-kangaroo, is now officially extinct.

In an effort to bolster my spirits, I walked a few feet to the mall's grandiose and festive Santa's Workshop, where eager children get to meet the Great Elf in person. It's pretty cool to watch as youngsters, jittery with excitement, flock to Santa with carefully memorized lists of presents they'd like to receive.

It actually made me happy for a few moments and reminded me of my own carefree youth — until I noticed a few of the kids' mothers peering at me suspiciously. Ditto for the security guard. And it occurred to me that, in today's world, an old guy lurking by himself near a "Meet Santa" attraction, with children buzzing about like happy bees, naturally inspires suspicion if not outright repugnance.

And so it also occurred to me that folks like myself need our own equivalent to "a visit to Santa." We should have a "Meet the Grim Reaper" booth, where I can totter up and sit on his skeletal lap, which is as cold as the soil of a loved one's grave. "What would you like for Christmas as we roll towards what may be your last New Year?" Pale Death will whisper. 

And I'll bolster my courage and, in a piping voice of gleeful expectation, say:

1. "I'd like someone to solder those flayed nerve-endings that jolt in my thighs and feet so I no longer feel as though my legs are hooked up to a sputtering electric chair." 

2. "It would be fun if someone at Lowe's would invent a snow shovel that doesn't rely on the precise principles of leverage and dispersal most likely to cause a widow-maker cardiac incident in anyone over 50 attempting to clear the driveway."

3. "Is there some additive I can take and also feed my dog so that, as we otherwise snuggle happily, our respective "elderly creature" morning breath exhalation don't smell like Jonestown?"

4. "Just because I'm funny, could you arrange to have the walls in all hospital emergency rooms and ICU wings repainted with replications of Zdzisław Beksiński's "Night Creeper."

5. "Please make Hickory Farms bring back Ham Sticks."