Knee-Jerk Poetry Friday: The Best Christmas Evah

Quick Poetry Friday today...'cause I want your honest opinion with no hemming and hawing.

What was your best Christmas present...ever?

Now I don't mean those wonderful lofty things like "I finally achieved peace with my father", or "my child who was born before Christmas after 3 days of labor" (yeah, that would be me), or "I decided to give up smoking/sniffing glue/drinking grain alcohol" things.

I mean GIFTS. Real hard items, bought or made, something that you can feel or touch or eat or rub yer nekked self up against.

Me?

Second grade. My family was pretty poor. But that year, through some stroke of good fortune and an upturn in the auto industry, my dad's workplace gave all the employees Christmas Bonuses. Fairly substantial ones, I was later to learn. My brother and I stumbled downstairs Christmas morning to find new bikes for each of us...two wheelers...they were more beautiful than any car I'd seen before or since. I spent many many springs, summers, and falls on that thing, scraping my knees and exploring the lonely roads near our house, feeling the sweet Taste of Freedom for the first time.

That Christmas my brother and I also received our first real wristwatches, which made us feel very grownup indeed. And there were more than the usual half dozen gifts under the tree for each of us, which was like winning the kid lottery.

I felt like a Princess Millionaire.