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christmas disappointment

I can still remember quite vividly, the wonder and hope I had, the last christmas I cared. All I wanted was Tobor (robot spelled backwards!), I know I told my folks, told 'santa', told anyone, how cool the toy sounded.

Christmas morn, I come into the living room before the folks are awake, and I see 'the big santa present'. It's too big to be Tobor though, so my ever hopeful mind got the idea that maybe it was 4 tobor's shaped into a cube.

It was a basketball. Something I had NEVER expressed an interest in having, a sport my father had never played with me, which I knew nothing about, beyond the Dr J comic.

To say I was disappointed would be the understatement of my life. It was a seminal point in my conversion from child to adult. It was the point at which I knew for certain that what was important to me, wasn't even remotely important to my folks.

I didn't cry in front of them, as always I kept any disappointment hidden deep inside, afraid that if I showed any, my folks' limited interaction with me would be even more limited. But I cried, inside, when they weren't around. I started trying to live in a fantasy world where at least 1 adult understood me, cared about me, held me.

I suspect neither parent has any clue just how much that toy-denial hurt our relationship.

A few years later, after my sisters were born, it got even worse. When my folks bought my middle sister a full blown grand piano for one of her christmas', I got the message. When my folks bought my little sister a horse, I got the message.

Someday I'll spend an outrageous sum on ebay, just to prove to my adult self how disappointed I would have been in Tobor.

It won't ever erase the memory of the christmas morning, looking at the box for the 'big' santa present, and ever hopefully calculating that 4 tobors stacked together could make the square shape under the tree.

2007-07-25