When I was 5 years old we moved to Hawaii.(I mentioned this a million times but my high school English teacher always told us to write with the assumption that the reader just met you and has no clue about your history so here you go Mr.J) The church where we started going regularly had a Christmas party and every child under 12 received a toy. I'm guessing my mom must have signed up our names and ages because they had Santa Claus call out every one's names when it was their turn. Since I have an "A" name, I was one of the first ones called and I got to tell Santa that I was really good(which was probably a lie) and thanks for my toy. I opened my present and was pretty happy with the little yellow and white bear. Until Santa called my sister's name and she came back WITH A BARBIE. I then and there decided I HATED that yellow bear and I cried all the way home. I'm pretty sure my dad lectured me on being thankful for the gifts I'm given. Yeah, in one ear and out the other. In my defense I was 5, the youngest of four kids and used to getting hand me down toys so of course I was likely pouting about the fact that I was going to have to wait a long time for my sister to get sick of that beautiful Barbie in a pink ballgown. My parents must have either felt sorry for me or secretly agreed that what I got was LAME because that evening after dinner they went out and came home with a Malibu Barbie for me. I do have a memory of not really liking it at first because the one my sister got had cuter clothes and all mine had was a bathing suit. Until our other sister showed me the tan lines and told me this Barbie was more Hawaiian. I don't remember what became of the yellow bear. It probably ended up on that island of misfits in the Rudolph movie I still watch every year.
I'm still in the process of moving and have tons of really tedious and boring things to do but I haven't posted in a long time so I thought I would share a memory of how annoying I was as a little kid during Christmas.....I'll try to post more when this is all done.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Just enough time for one quick Christmas memory post
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Oh, dear, now you've gone and sparked one of my more painful memories. My mother bought me a white "honey" bear which I hated because I liked brown ones. An older child offered to trade her brown one for my white one and I handed it over. She then refused to produce the brown bear "from her house" and when I asked again, she knocked me down and kicked me before running off with my bear.
My mother asked where it was and I told her. She got very angry and her lips quivered. She said, "I bought that honey bear for YOU, not Mary. I paid a whole dollar for it," so I explained again that I hadn't given it away, I had traded it only Mary didn't give me hers, which seemed like an important distinction to me. I was spanked and treated like an arch criminal for a very long time and never forgot it.
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