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.
No comments:
Post a Comment