With Christmas creeping ever closer, it’s time for Christmas lists, but I’m having a hard time starting mine.
I could say life’s too busy, which it has been.
Or I could plead ignorance, saying I don’t know what I want, which isn’t true.
Or I could say my tastes are expensive this year, and having been raised in a thrifty family, embarrassment keeps me from showing anyone such a pricey list. Now this last reason is closer to the truth, so I’ve developed a few suggestions to help my potential gift givers stretch their shopping dollars. Maybe they could find the Pampered Chef baking stone and chopper I’m hankering for. Come to think of it, ebay might also have some of the remaining serving pieces needed to complete my good set of Lenox china.
But all those reasons are smoke screens created to obscure the real reason my Christmas list isn’t ready. See, the only thing I yearn for is, according to my research, a figment of my childhood imagination. All I want for Christmas, and all I’ve ever wanted since it was first advertised on TV when I was about seven, is a little cardboard princess vanity and stool, complete with play cosmetics and a real mirror.
The memory of the ad is fresh in my mind, as is my ancient childhood certainty that my thrifty parents would never, never buy such an expensive gift. And the memory of my joy one Christmas morning when I found the vanity assembled and ready for use in the bedroom I shared with my sister, has never left me. Neither has the disappointment I experienced upon waking from the most vivid dream of my entire life.
Since the night of that dream, a cardboard princess vanity is all I’ve ever wanted for Christmas. But after scouring the internet and finding no mention of them anywhere, I’m convinced they were a figment of my overactive imagination. Either that or they were so chintzy, they all fell apart and are no longer in existence.
If any of you remember seeing those TV ads and were captivated by them, too, would you leave a comment? And if you received one as a gift, please lie through your teeth. Even if it’s not true, tell me the fake cosmetics didn’t work, the furniture was a piece of junk, and the gift was the most disappointing one you ever received.
At age fifty-three, it’s time to put this dream behind me and get on with life. There’s a world of Pampered Chef and Lenox out there, and it’s time I stepped into it.
