I want a new toy, Oh-EE-Oh
If you have young children, send them away and don’t let them near the computer screen. I’m going PG-13.
When you are young, you want to understand all the mysteries of the world. My first unsolved mystery was sex. I didn’t want to do it, I just wanted to understand what all the fuss was about. Well, Casey, my slutty catholic friend, clued me in. I’m pretty sure 90 percent of this nation received sex education from an overexposed catholic before there was cable. It makes you wonder what they teach in CCD. But I digress…So, by the time my parents signed the sex ed movie permission slip when I was nine (their personal get-out-of-the-talk-free-card), I was already informed.
Then I became 10, my period came, and I developed a renewed hatred of boys. There was only one unsolved mystery left.
You never forget your first time.
It was December 1976. I was 10 years old and mom had bamboozled me to take a ride in the station wagon. We were ½ way up Powhatan Street, almost at the water reservoir, when she said, “There is no Santa Claus. We’re going to Toys ‘R Us and you are picking out the toys you know your brother wants.”
Was I disappointed? No. I was relieved. Logistically, Santa never made sense to me and I didn’t understand why NORAD wasted time tracking him. This further explained why Santa generally delivered crap to me. It wasn’t because I was naughty; it was because the list I diligently prepared for Santa was secretly re-sorted by price by my parents. December 25, 1976, my brother, Robert, had a very good Christmas because I managed to persuade my mom to get cool crap at Toys ‘R Us.
Why am I having this flashback almost 30 years later? Yesterday on the phone, it happened again. “Well, what do you think I should get Robert and Andrea for Christmas? I was thinking about making a donation in their name to the underprivileged families at the base,” said my mother.
That was a thoughtful suggestion, but I told her she might want to throw in a Target and Bath and Body Works gift certificate too. Now my mom’s present selection dilemmas are solved with gift certificates, with a little help from the eldest daughter.
Don’t tell my brother. It’s still a mystery to him.