My birthday is on Christmas Day.
My parents handled this "crappy birthday" exceptionally well: They threw me Christmas in July birthday parties every summer until I reached high school.
On Christmas day itself, the tradition was for my brother and I to open all of our presents upstairs, and then for me to venture downstairs to see what my "special" (aka birthday) present was. For my 8th birthday, I got a Gameboy Pocket and Pokemon Red version. Another year, I got a metallic pink bike. I was always beyond excited to go to the basement to see what I had gotten for turning a year older!
Oddly enough, the present that blew the others out of the water was a chalkboard.
My OWN chalkboard! Endless doodling! I could practice my cursive and erase it then practice it again! When my younger cousin came over, we could play School and I could be the teacher! They even got me colored chalk! The possibilities were endless. My father hung it on the wall and I could never remember being more entertained with anything else.
The chalkboard lived out its days of playing School, and playing tic-tac-toe with my mother, and doodles that got fancier with age. When I was 21 and threw a party in my basement, people left me birthday messages on the chalkboard. And when I went away to school and got an apartment, the chalkboard came with me so that my roommates and I could keep a running countdown of days until graduation.
Nowadays, it seems like kids aren't thrilled with anything less than the most expensive electronics and video games.
But I always like to think about how happy it made me to get something as simple as a chalkboard.
Currently, it's sitting with the rest of my college things in
the basement; collecting dust and waiting for the eventual move. But rest assured that no matter where life takes me,that nearly 20 year old chalkboard will come along for the ride.
