Our present stack represented a large pile of legos. Seeing as we were a family of five kids, things piled up quickly. Looking back on it now, I have to wonder how much my parents must have spent on those presents. It couldn't have been cheap. Well, I'm sure they cut a few corners by giving Bill and I shared gifts. We often got stacks of gifts with both of our names on it seeing as we would be the ones who would both play with them. I hold no grudge over that practice. It was smart economics on my parents part. Two for the price of 1.
As I think back to Christmas from an adult perspective, there are bits and pieces of Christmas that come back to me.
- I remember staying awake one night and falling asleep on the basement steps waiting for Santa to come. We never saw him, but presents showed up anyway. Speaking of which, I noticed we didn't have a chimney so I often wondered how in the hell did he get in our house anyway?
- I remember getting Tobor, the remote controlled robot. This was a big deal back then. He was a black robot with a long wire hanging out of him. The remote control also had a long wire hanging out of it. The range was limited and he could only turn right everytime you clicked the remote, but I enjoyed it anyway.
- I remember some friends of my parents visiting us on Christmas when I was around 4. Their son near my age got a Little People treehouse that I could have swore was supposed to go to us and I was rather upset when they left and it went with them. Obviously, it was the son's gift, but tell a four-year-old kid that.
- I remember asking and getting Stretch Armstrong, the doll whose only purpose was to stretch his arms and legs. We stretched and stretched and it wasn't long before we broke him and noticed that he was filled with jelly.
- I remember asking for and getting a rubber dartgun. My sole reason for getting it was because I wanted to shoot my brother, Bill in the head so that the dart would stick like in the movie, the Toy. I got it, shot my brother, who cried when it hit him in the eye and it was promptly taken away. And who says that we're not affected by the media?
- I remember getting underoos (sp?), the underwear that had your favorite superhero on it. Now these weren't your pansy underroos from later when they had the character designs all over it. These were the ones that actually looked like the costume! We had Superman and Batman. Bill and I ran around like happy little pixies that day.
- I remember finding a Spiderman race track in my parent's closet about a month before Christmas. I'd come into the closet periodically and checked it out. I really can't remember who it was for, but when it showed up on Christmas, it was still a nice surprise.
- I remember not seeing Star Wars, but still wanting Star Wars toys for Christmas. It was a hard sell because there were so many of them. We didn't have a lot of the cool toys like the Tie Fighter or the Land Speeder, but we did end up with the Deathstar! I've talked to so many people who were jealous that I had that thing. It was three stories tall. It had an elevator and a garbage compactor complete with foam and trash monster. Why in the hell did I get rid of that one?
- I remember getting our beloved family dog, Snoopy, on Christmas. He arrived as a puppy. Every year, we would celebrate his birth on Christmas day.
I don't really remember the presents that I wanted and didn't get, unless you count the Atart 2600 the family wanted. Our parents claimed that their friends had one for their family and they hardly ever touched it. I thought back then that there would be no way I wouldn't want to play those games. Although thinking back now, I do remember a reluctance from a lot of friends to play the game system. They were probably bored of it and the last thing they wanted to do when a friend came over was to play it.
As a parent now, I often feel guilty that we're getting too many presents for our child or that we're not getting the right ones or not enough of ones that she wants. Then I realized that it's not that we get everything, it's that we get enough to create lasting memories. We don't have to get Julia everything because there will always be more than she could want. What's important that a child gets at least something, because getting nothing would suck ass.
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