When I was a kid, for three consecutive Christmases, all I wanted was a Nintendo. All of my friends had one, but my parents would get us one because they were rightfully worried that it would interfere with my already suffering grades.
One year I came up with the perfect scheme with which to trap my parents into giving me a Nintento. I figured that if I asked for nothing for Christmas except the Nintendo, they’d have the option of giving me what I wanted (and be the bestest parents ever on the face of the universe) or give me absolutely nothing (and be legendarily bad parents). It was unprecedented that we didn’t get anything.
So Christmas day rolled around, and I got two gifts from them. Neither were the correct size for a gaming system. Turned out that one box had some tape and the other had string.
I had inadvertently foiled my own plan. I was making a theme park with legos in my room about a week or so before Christmas, but I ran out of the string and tape that I needed. So I asked Mom if she had any around, but she was out. She said not to worry because it would get taken care of if I was just patient.
So all I had asked for for Christmas was a game system they wouldn’t get me, and household supplies they would have gotten me anyway. My parents had somehow managed to outsmart me again. I couldn’t understand why that kept happening.
Merry Christmas!
Comment by Abel — December 24, 2007 @ 9:20 pm
Is this story apocryphal? If it really happened, that’s horrible.
Comment by Spungen — December 27, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
Haha, well it was a long time ago and that’s about how I remember it. Thinking it over, I must have gotten more than that because my parents always had an equal number of gifts for the three of us. Whatever it was, though, was extremely insignificant. I remember going back to school and having to sheepishly explain to my friends that all (or pretty much all) I got string and tape for Christmas. If I’d had anything at all to brag about, I would have bragged about it.
I was really a brat about that game system before that and never bothered to ask for it after, so if they were trying to teach me a lesson, it worked. Mom was always looking for ways to remind us how good we had it, and presenting something as ordinary as tape and string was probably another aspect of that.
The filler gifts I got in addition to the string and tape is probably worthy of another post, maybe for next Christmas.
Comment by trumwill — December 27, 2007 @ 2:08 pm