A Therapist Would Have A Field Day With Me

I should lead this off by saying that as a child, I wanted for nothing. We always had enough of everything. And then some. We weren’t OVERLY spoiled, but we were certainly not hurting either.

But even with that, there were a lot of Christmases that came with a fair amount of disappointment on my end. Other than the year that I got my Cabbage Patch dolls (I got TWO! One from Santa, and one from my very favorite Grandmother who passed the following summer) I never received the ‘in’ gifts. Ever. And its not to say that we didn’t get presents. Because we did. But my parents were never really ones, for various reasons, to give in to the hot gift of the year hype.

Fast forward to 2011.

Enter the Toys R Us big book of Santa going broke that comes out late October every year.

I think that kids are programmed in utero to KNOW what that is. Because it was barely in the door to our house before Three went crazy for it.

So I gave it to him to look at because I figured it would give me a couple good ideas as to what he would want to ask for from Santa this year.

Well, he found wall tracks.

And the husband saw them too. And some sort of testosterone switch flipped or something and the two of them decided that these things are the coolest things ever.

My estrogen switch flipped on and said ‘These things can’t possibly work that well’. And also ‘we just paid a small fortune to get the walls painted. And you want to do WHAT to the walls?’

So I worked on dissuading the child from wanting them. Eventually, when you asked him what he wanted to ask Santa for, he would tell you ‘A Cars scooter. With two wheels. *Pause* And tracks for the wall’. *Pause* *sheepish grin* ‘And an iPad’.

We are just pretending that my THREE YEAR OLD didn’t seriously ask for an iPad. Even though he did. But Mama doesn’t have an iPad so its not even open to discussion.

ANYWAY!

I had no interest in those dumb tracks. I even went about playing Santa’s helper with the full intention of making sure those tracks were not in the sleigh. A scooter with two wheels (after returning the more age appropriate scooter with 3 wheels) that Santa can do. But not those dumb tracks.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did try to use the tracks as incentive for Three to take a beautiful, smiling photo with Santa this year. Because if he didn’t keep his cool with the big man this year, Santa wouldn’t know that he wanted them. This logic worked riiiiiiiight up until Three was in Santa’s presence. And then he wanted nothing to do with him and we ended up with ANOTHER year of a family photo with Santa. And a scarred child who days later realized that not only didn’t he get to ask for the wall tracks, he ‘didn’t ask for a scooooooooottttttteeerrrrrrrrrr. How will Santa *snif* know that I *snif* want a *snif* scccccccooooooooootttttttttterrrrrrrrrrrrrrr?’ Oooops.

Right around that time Facebook reared its ugly head. It turns out like every boy in his preschool class wants those wall tracks. And some of them are getting them.

And in that moment, reading the comments on the picture one of my friends had uploaded of her 4 year old’s christmas list, I was flashed back to riding the bus to school the first day back from Christmas break. And everyone talking about whatever the toy / gadget du jore was while I sat there thinking about how all Santa brought me was a lousy board game about math. (Seriously, that happened. Its not so affectionately known as the year that all Helen got for Christmas was board games. I also got Scrabble, Life, and Battleship the same year. At least it wasn’t coal, I guess?).

And that single memory is how I ended up spending my last vacation day of the year searching all over the county and eventually standing in Target (with The Husband – big mistake!) debating which Wall Tracks set to buy. And since The Husband was there, we ended up buying both.

Three is going to have the ‘hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye’.

Other than that lack of an iPad thing.