These Boots Were Made for Wantin'

Read in St. Louis and Easton

When I was in elementary school, my two sisters and I had all gotten stylish new fashion boots for Christmas. My little sister and I got some white slip-on go-go boots that sort of resembled dressy galoshes, with a flat, low heel. My older sister, who was in junior high, got something entirely different--she got the most beautiful, chic, sophisticated and grownup pair of boots I had ever seen in my entire ten years of life. When I saw her boots, I said a secret prayer to Jesus, begging him to send Santa back later that evening to take my childish go-go boots away and bring me back a pair of grown-up boots just like hers. It was not the most altruistic prayer I’ve ever uttered in my lifetime, to be sure.

In a bizarre twist of Christmas tradition, my sisters and I also received a communal gift from Santa -- a snazzy red minibike. It was quite a surprise, because none of us even knew we wanted a minibike. Boy, my dad was excited though -- you’d have thought Santa had brought it just for him.

My sisters and I spent the afternoon digging through our closets, trying on every article of clothing we owned with our new boots Gosh, those boots were amazing, they made everything look good. I was modeling a ruffled swimsuit and ballet tights with my go-go boots when Dad yelled for us to come outside. I put on my hooded car coat over my striking swimsuit-go-go boots combo, and stomped outside looking like a vision from Paris.

We were called outside to ride the minibike that Dad had been tinkering with all morning. We loudly complained that we were busy playing with our boots, but he was ready for somebody to take a test drive, probably so he could have a turn. So we very reluctantly trudged around outside in our fashion outfits, and my older sister said she’d get on the minibike first so she could get it over with.

Dad had already started the bike, so my sister climbed on, put her fashion-boot-clad foot on the footrests, and not waiting for instructions, gunned the handle-bar accelerator. The minibike lurched across the driveway and into the yard like a cannonball and then unceremoniously drove into a stand of shrubbery where the bike eventually wobbled halfway up an unsuspecting holly bush, sputtered, whined, and died. However, this slow painful death came about only after churning up dirt, branches, and leaves like a renegade woodchipper. Although the grey pall of the exhaust still hung in the air, everything suddenly went dreadfully still. My little sister and I stood silently aghast, trying to take in all the details of what had just transpired. Dad ran over to the thicket to try to help our sister out, but she had already disengaged herself from the man-eating bushes and was red-faced, crying, angry, and picking twigs out of her hair. As she bent down to check her skinned knee, we all saw the same horrific thing at the same time. Her beautiful boots had taken the brunt of the accident, like heroic yet stylish soldiers of fashion. They were ripped, dirty and scuffed beyond repair.

Oh, how we sobbed and cried, all three of us, for the loss of those exquisite grown-up boots! It was a Christmas day footwear tragedy of previously-unknown proportions! We wept, sisters united and brought together in a time of fashion crisis by two innocent damaged zippered tubes of imitation leather. We weren’t sure how we would carry on.

Despite our feelings of doom and dismay, the sun did rise the next day. That morning, Mom took my sister to the mall, where she got another pair of grown-up boots at 60% off. I got to keep the old ones, and honestly, they didn’t look all that bad. If you didn’t look too closely at the duct taped repairs, I thought I looked very worldly and a little like Susan Dey from the Partridge Family.

It was a very good Christmas.

Seventy-Two Pieces of Deluxe Christmas Joy

Read in Poughkeepsie

When I was 8, I began to covet, with a passion previously reserved only for Bobby Sherman, the 72-piece Deluxe Biology and Dissection Set from the Sears catalogue. Oh my word, that biology kit was to die for. My sisters and I would longingly pour over the Christmas catalogue, drooling and cooing over Barbies, baby strollers and Mousetrap games, but my secret desire was the biology set.

The wondrous full-color product representation took up a half-page in the catalogue, and the content description was so lengthy and detailed that the editors had to use bullet points and multiple paragraphs to properly convey how incredibly fantastic this biology set was.

As Christmas approached, mom asked us for our lists for Santa. I wrote my usual list of dolls, model horses, Mystery Date, but as a reckless and thrilling act of heresy, I added “72-piece Deluxe Biology and Dissection Set” to the bottom of the list. I felt an adrenalin rush as I handed it to my mother. I ran to my room and slammed the door shut. My head was spinning. Could it be? Could it possibly happen? Only time would tell....

On Christmas Eve, as in Christmases past, my sisters and I would pile into my twin bed with an alarm clock under the pillow, so that we could talk and giggle with excitement over the anticipation of Santa’s visit. Later, the muffled alarm startled us awake, and we coordinated our plans--to peruse the Santa loot and then select one small toy to take back to bed with us.

Like little ninjas in our footie pajamas, we crept silently down the stairs. My older sister plugged in the cord for the tree light. The three-color light wheel made the aluminum tree glow like a vision from heaven. I immediately recognized the intoxicating scent of new vinyl baby dolls wafting through the night air.

I walked around all sorts of toys, and my sisters were excitedly opening Barbie suitcases and Davy Jones record players. But I was drawn towards the back corner, where a large box could be seen in the dim light. Oh! Be still my heart! Could it be?

I stifled a scream of excitement, and fell to my knees in utter amazement. There before me, wrapped in glorious cellophane was the one and only, inimitable, reason-for-living, be-all-to-end-all, Christmas gift extraordinaire, the Deluxe 72-Piece Biology and Dissection Kit!

My sisters were completely and profoundly unimpressed with my beloved biology set. They actually scoffed at it! Unfortunately, we only had a few minutes until we had to get back to bed, and they had already decided which toys to take with them.

As for me, I grabbed the entire box containing stainless steel tools, grasshoppers, frogs, and numerous other accessories and happily headed back upstairs.

My older sister grabbed the neck of my pajamas and yanked me off my feet back into the room. “You can only take ONE SMALL ITEM,” she hissed. “You know the rules!” I knew I had better do as she said or I would likely be sampling a Christmas Day dirt sandwich, courtesy of her new EZ-Bake Oven and her definite weight advantage. I stood there contemplating this quandary while they made their way back upstairs with their dolls. I could take something like a Barbie or a stuffed animal. OR I could open my beloved biology set and take something from it. Yes! What a brilliant idea! Why, I hadn’t even opened the box and I already felt smarter!

I frantically scratched and clawed at the cellophane wrapping, and lifted the top off. I was groping in the dark, touching the 72 pieces nestled neatly into their own individually molded compartments in the styrofoam packaging. My hand fell upon a smooth, cool bottle, and I gently pried it out, replaced the box top, and ran quickly and quietly back upstairs, where my sisters were already quietly snoring. I didn’t know what was in that wonderful bottle, but I held it lovingly to my chest and fell back to sleep, dreaming of magical dissections and scientific discoveries to come.

The sunlight streaming through the window woke me up, but the feel of wet sheets under me was even more sobering. Yuck! Someone had wet the bed, and even worse, they had peed on my pajama top! I shook my sisters awake and ordered them out of my bed because “someone” in the group had had an accident. They both denied any knowledge of such an egregious and shameful act, but wholeheartedly agreed that the odor was indeed heinous. Mysteriously, both had escaped getting wet, and they gleefully raced downstairs, but only after throwing an accusatory glance my way.

How the heck did MY pajamas get wet? I wasn’t feeling so good, either. I had a headache, and my hands and feet were cold. I headed downstairs, and started to feel woozy. All I remember after that is walking into the kitchen and passing out in the floor.

I blacked out only for a few seconds, and when I regained consciousness, my whole family was hovering over me. My sisters were pointing at me, gagging, and screaming.

As I lay there, I felt something wet and kind of hard stuck to my neck, so I reached up and peeled it off. It felt like piece of cold rubber. I held it up close to my face to get a better look, and found myself staring into the sucker of a large, well-preserved leech. I screamed and flicked it across the room, where it bounced off one of my shrieking sisters. Everyone was running around that kitchen like a bunch of maniacs, except for my mother, who had disappeared.

She returned a moment later, knelt down and held up an empty, lidless glass bottle and told me she found it in my bed, on the wet sheets.

Aha.

In my haste to take some Christmas joy back to bed with me, I had unwittingly taken a pickled leech from the biology set. The lid had come unscrewed while I slept , and the stinky formaldehyde leaked onto my pajamas. As for the poor dead leech, it found itself embedded in my neck after I wallowed around on it all night long.

It was… a Christmas to remember.

Merry Conchmas

Read in Minneapolis

One of our very first Christmases as a married couple was spent in the Florida Keys. It was a nontraditional Christmas for sure, but very romantic--the weather was beautiful, the sky was cloudless and vast, and the water was so blue it made your eyes ache.

My husband and I were strolling down one of the more deserted beaches in the Middle Keys on Christmas morning when we spotted a gorgeous pearly pink conch shell that had washed up on the sand. It was pristine and gorgeous and perfect. It was as if God had placed this special shell on the sand as our own personal romantic Christmas gift from the sea.

We decided to take it back home with us to serve as a reminder of this wonderful, beautiful tropical Christmas Day. We carried the precious gift to our car parked at the hotel and gently placed it on the back seat so that we wouldn’t forget it when we started the long drive back home in a few days.

We spent the rest of our vacation around the hotel, swimming and sunbathing and enjoying the sunny tropical climate. Finally, three days later it was time to load the car up and start the drive back to Atlanta. We reluctantly carried our luggage out to the car, not wanting our vacation to end.

I wistfully stood next to the car while my husband stuck his key in the lock, turned the key and opened the door, thereby unleashing the full, unbridled, undiminished fury of the seventh circle of heck.

Visible stink waves of biblical proportion came thundering out of that car door like a malodorous tidal wave. The stench knocked me off my feet, watered up my eyes so I could hardly see, and instantly made my hair frizz up something awful. Something, something big and nasty, like an entire family of aquatic Sasquatches maybe, had crawled out of that conch shell and died on the floorboard of our Ford Torino. Nobody had ever told us that horrible, nasty, stinky, malevolent evil pods of olfactory atrociousness lived in those pretty pink sea shells. Somebody should have told us before we hermetically sealed it up in the four-wheeled oven we left out in the sun for three scorching hot days. We had to ride 15 long, long hours in that abomination on wheels with the windows down, and that was after we ran it through a car wash with the doors open.

Conch shells. The Christmas gift that keeps on giving.