Memories

I watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" last night with the boy. I look forward to watching it every year. This is going to sound corny but, I felt some sort of torch was passed. Another notch in my life. I remember as a young lad getting excited about Christmas specials that aired on television. My mother would allow my sister and I to ignore our bedtime and stay up to watch the various shows. Rudolph, Frosty, The Grinch... etc. And, here I was, allowing my son to stay up past his bedtime to watch. The holiday season, for me, was always an exciting time in my childhood - as I'm sure it is for most everyone.

One story that I always remember is the year that my sister and I started opening up presents before my parents were awake. The rule was, that if we awoke before my parents, we were allowed to get into our stockings and play with whatever was in there. Usually, Santa would leave such things as candy, playing cards, matchbox cars and trinkets. There would always be one tiny present that was wrapped and my mother had always hoped that it would keep us occupied for a while. Well, this particular year, my sister and I decided that we could open up our presents to and from each other. Our reasoning was, that mom and dad wouldn't care. They didn't buy these particular presents, so why would they care? This was all taking place at about 5 - 5:30 in the morning. There was no way that we were going to drag my dad out of bed that early. So after a period of time as my sister and I sat under the tree admiring the few things that we had opened up, we began to talk about opening more presents. We kept rationalizing why we needed to go ahead and open more presents. Don't ask me what those thoughts were but, suffice it to say... we started opening things one at a time. We started with the smallest items first and then progressed to the bigger things. We were so excited that the thought of what my parents might say was far removed from our minds. Sometime later, when we were halfway through, I heard stirring in my parents bedroom. My mother came out and turned on the lights. We had been caught red handed! Thinking back to it now, who else would it have been? Who would break into our house, unwrap only the presents to my sister and I and leave? Mom was not happy. She did a little bit of yelling. I kept thinking to myself... Hey, hey, hey - Take it easy Mom. This is Christmas. We get yelled at every other day of the year. We don't need this now. This is the most wonderful day of the year and you're ruining it by yelling at us. It was obvious that she was not thinking along the same lines that I was because she sent us to our rooms. How could she send us to our rooms? For God's sake woman - it's Christmas! Anyway, we laid in our beds, wide awake, until she came and got us an hour and a half later. All my dad said was "What did you do that for?"

Okay, one other quick story. One year my sister and I begged for ten speeds. All autumn long, we kept bugging my mom and she would say "Ask Santa". Finally, Christmas Day arrives. We run out to the tree and there they are! New ten speed bicycles! Although, wait a minute! What's this? Why would Santa do this to us? These bikes are hideous looking! Disgusting yellow in color. Who in their right mind would paint a bike canary yellow? Sis and I were not happy. Now, you have to realize that the only lighting was the blinking colored lights from the tree. My sister and I sat in silence for the next 45 minutes, waiting for mom and dad to get up. We were trying to decide on how to tell them that they needed to take the bikes back and get us a different color. Mom came out first and turned the lights on and we couldn't believe our eyes! The bike were really red. Don't ask me how but the lights on the tree had distorted the color on the bikes. How they went from red to canary yellow is beyond me. My sister and I were, at times, ungrateful little shits.