Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Santa can be a real bastard sometimes.

I was a nerd when I was a kid. I’m still a nerd, but back then my nerdiness was huge. I was basically Steve Urkel minus the thick glasses, weird voice, and African-American ethnicity. I was so nerdy that one year all I wanted for Christmas was a rock tumbler. Apparently, I found smooth, well-polished rocks to be cool, and the ability to polish them myself even cooler.

December 25th came around and I unwrapped my gifts to reveal a box with a red rock tumbler pictured right on the front. I was overjoyed. I was so happy that I jumped in the air and accidentally broke the hanging chandelier above me with my fist. I may have felt bad about ruining the light fixture, but I felt even worse when I looked more closely at the box and realized that my parents had mistakenly gotten me an unmotorized attachment to a rock tumbler instead of a tumbler itself. Unless I felt like spinning the tumbler barrel around by hand for three days straight, my rocks would forever remain rough and unshiny.

That was my biggest Christmas disappointment ever.

This year all I really wanted for Christmas was a new digital camera. Mine is currently three years old and the size of a meatloaf. It has a nifty swivel feature that allows for easy stalking photography (which I can’t live without), and I was sure you couldn’t get that in a smaller camera. One day I opened the Sunday ads to find the Nikon CoolPix S4. My heart had ached for it ever since. I put it right on the top of my Christmas list and prayed for the best.

December 25th came around and I picked up a small unsuspecting box to unwrap. I peeled off the paper to find a SD memory card for a digital camera. It was the exact same kind of card that fits the CoolPix S4. I knew what that meant – I was getting the camera. I was overjoyed. I looked up excitedly to thank my parents when my dad said to me, “Uh, Andrew, whose name is on the tag?”

I picked up the tattered wrapping paper from the floor to read the words “To Vina” written across the front. I had opened my mother’s gift by mistake. It was her memory card. It turned out the only person getting a digital camera that day was my mom.

And that is my biggest Christmas disappointment ever.