Painful Past Presents

Don’t worry – it’s not a grammar lesson.

You all have them – painful presents of the past. Either you gave them or received them. Our breakfast table memories were around the ones we gave as parents. This was all prompted by the surfeit of circulars in our only choice for newsprint, “The Denver Post.”

The ad for “Big 5” brought back paintball guns and those colored bbs which we still find embedded in the ground and the expansion joints in the concrete. Supposedly they were biodegradable. After a million years, I suppose most everything is.

We recalled the only Black Friday mission my husband went on years ago in order to claim two Razor scooters for our children. That venture resulted in a broken wrist for my non-Pinterest Pal, “Pom.”

There was “Life Size Barbie,” who now resides in our basement scaring youngsters and my son. “Thomas the Train,” who currently lives in the attic of the garage. When toys have human names you feel kind of bad getting rid of them, even though banishing them to the outer reaches is apparently acceptable. As a matter of fact, my old “Charmin’ Chatty” doll (no, not “Chatty Kathy” – that’s another train of thought) keeps Barbie company in the basement. She still has a record inside her that plays a scratchy form of communication when you pull the string. She was on the “perfect past presents list,” of course, which is how she’s survived all these years.

One day we’ll recall the good gifts, but today, we focused on the head-shaking things we acquired as parents hoping to bring the miracle of Christmas through to our children. Nothing celebrates the birth of Christ like a Red Ryder BB gun!