December 27, 2010

• Christmas Presents

  (I wrote this two years ago.  The aunt who gave me the present in this piece died this past winter so I guess this is a bittersweet memory but I will always remember how much she cared.)

  We all know the old saying surrounding Christmas: "It's better to give than to receive."  However true that saying may be, there is a part of me that craves Christmas presents.  I always love getting "toys" be it electronics, tools, stuff for my car, movies, music, books, or actual toys.  Then there are they things I don't care for such as school supplies, clothes, socks (although this year my parents found me some thermal socks in my size so I am pleased), and ties.  One year of teaching at Christmas, I received 25+ ties from my students. 

  I was watching "A Christmas Story" yesterday morning and the scene that always makes me laugh no matter how many hundreds of times that I have seen it is when Ralph receives the bunny suit from his aunt.  He then is forced by his mother to don this pink outfit and model it for the family. 

  

  This scene always reminds me of the one gift I received that still makes me cringe.  When I was about ten, I had just gotten a pet cat.  For some reason one of my aunts thought I had a pet dog.  She usually sent me the coolest presents but this year she tried something different.  She was going through a phase of making her own clothing or buying clothes and "bedazzling" them but necessarily with rhinestones.  I was set to receive one of her projects.

  Christmas Day morning comes and I run for the Christmas tree to see all the wonderful presents that Santa brought.  Yes, Santa.  I knew better but every year my mom hides the presents and labels everything I receive from her and my dad as being from Santa or my cats.  The tradition was that I opened the presents from my family first.  So I am clamoring for my one aunt's present because they were always the coolest.  My dad fishes out the present and hands it to me.  I rip away the paper at light speed and undid the tape holding the box shut.  Then...my heart sank.

  I looked inside the box.  A sweatshirt?  Was this some sort of sick joke?  I hold it up and shake it hoping something cool would fall out.  No such luck.  My mom looks at it..."A SWEATSHIRT!  WOW!"  The front was facing me.  My mom asks, "Is there anything on the front?"  I am shocked and my Christmas is falling down around me.  I look in horror at the front.  I turn it around to reveal the front to my parents. "OOOOOHHHH!!!! A Scottie dog!  How cute!"  I am near tears.  My dad says, "Go try it on." 

  I walk to the bathroom in disbelief.  I hear my parents talking about how lucky I am to get such a pretty sweatshirt.  I look in the mirror and I am in this walking comatose state.  I look at the front.  The Scottie dog was mocking me.  It was sewn on by hand.  My aunt couldn't have just sent me a nice blue sweatshirt, NO, she had to sew on a fuzzy Scottie dog.  It just looked at me and laughed at me for expecting a cool present.  A fuzzy Scottie dog.  How is that possible when we told her repeatedly that we just got a cat? 

  Like a trooper I put on the sweatshirt.  I walked out and showed off the sweatshirt along with my utter contempt for this horrible present.  My mom is squealing about how cute it looks on me and my dad is talking about with such a great sweatshirt like that, he will be able to keep the furnace turned down the rest of the winter.  Tears start flowing out of my eyes and I collapse.  A panic attack or maybe it was just an overload of contempt.

  I took off the sweatshirt and threw it under the tree and then proceeded to open my cool presents.  After all the presents were opened and I was in a state of orgasmic bliss from my new MASK, Ghostbusters, and G.I. Joe toys, my mom told me that I should call my aunt to thank her for the sweatshirt.  Knives through my heart.  I made the call and I should have been nominated for an Academy Award for saying how much I loved the sweatshirt and how much I loved Scottie dogs.  I hung up and thought that I would never have to worry about that sweatshirt ever again.

  A few days pass and it's time for school to resume.  My dad asks if I want to wear my new sweatshirt to school.  I say, "No, I don't want to ruin it and we have spaghetti for hot lunch so I don't want to stain it."  So I wear my regular school clothes.  School went by and we all had fun talking about all the new toys we received.  I got home that night and all hell broke loose.  My mom was screaming about how I didn't wear my new sweatshirt to school.  I said it wasn't cool and Scottie dogs were for "fags" (little did I know what that word meant in third grade).  My mom said I was wrong.  She made me wear it for that evening's activities, Lutheran Pioneers.  Lutheran Pioneers is my church's version of Boy Scouts.  See, our church is against the Boy Scouts because of their policy on believing in a "god".  Please don't comment about that.  I was just a little part German boy following orders.

  For being a Lutheran organization, you wouldn't expect kids to make fun of you for a sweatshirt, but they did.  I walk down with the pastor's son and he ran away from me to get to a table of our classmates and the pointing and laughing began.  Scottie dog sweatshirt!  HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME????????  I tried to tune it all out but it was horrible.  We had our devotion which gave me a brief respite from the ridicule of this ridiculous sweatshirt.  Then we had to walk past the Girl Pioneers and the laughter was worse.  No more kissing underneath the jungle gym for me all because of a stupid sweatshirt.  After two hours the ordeal was over and on the ride home I was crying and thinking the world hated me and that the only way I could continue life without dying was to transfer to a new school. 

  The next day at school my friends greeted me with, "Hey, did you walk your dog last night when you got home?  What do you feed it?  Did you name it?"  I screamed an obscenity I learned from my father and threw a Bible at one classmate.  The teacher took me to the principal's office where I had to explain myself as the principal who sat there behind his desk smoking his pipe and as I suspected was trying to hold back the laughter at my Scottie dog sweatshirt.  The only advice he gave me was to never throw a Bible at someone.  He called my mom and she came and got me.  I told her how everyone hated me now because of that stupid sweatshirt.  She then said that I wouldn't have to wear it outside of the house.  I buried it in my closet not to see it until 8 years later when my parents moved.

  So this brings me to my question:  What is the worst Christmas present you have ever received?

  • 1:29 PM
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