Please welcome Katie Lane to BookHounds!
My Best Childhood Christmas Gift Ever by
Katie Lane
My best Christmas
gift started out as my worst. I remember
peeling back the wrapping paper and thinking that Santa had made a horrible
mistake. GI Joe with Kung Fu Grip? This wasn’t the present I had asked for. This was a yucky boy toy. Needing some kind of explanation for the
travesty, I turned to my father, a man who just happened to be an Air Force sergeant
named Joe who suspiciously resembled the doll in my hand. My dad said only four words.
“Ken
is a sissy.”
Sissy? Had my father lost his mind? Ken wasn’t a sissy. He was a hip guy who wore groovy white pants
and striped knit sweaters, not stupid camouflaged fatigues and combat
boots. A guy with a sincere smile and dainty
feet, not a mean sneer and feet the size of scuba diving flippers. Not to mention that Ken was Barbie’s
SOULMATE!!! These were the things I
wanted to yell at my dad. Unfortunately,
I had learned early on that talking back to my father was bad for your butt. With protruding lip, I tossed Joe away and
moved on to the traditional sock package.
But
later on that morning, I couldn’t help but retrieve Joe from the crumpled pile
of wrapping paper. Just to see what
would happen, I carried him into to my room to meet Bubblehead Barbie.
She
was not impressed. Like me, she had been
expecting someone less macho. But after
fifteen minutes of play, both Barbie and I came to some startling realizations. Hard, plastic muscles look gooood. Kung Fu Grip was perfect for holding Barbie’s
handbag while shopping. And bendable
joints were a doll-design breakthrough.
Bendable joints gave Joe the ability to wrap his arm around Barbie while
they were chatting on the Kleenex box couch and pick her up and carry her to
safety when she stopped by Vietnam to say “hi.”
Joe
turned out to be much more than just a sneering boy toy with flipper-sized
feet. He turned out to be Barbie’s
SOULMATE. The kind of loyal guy who stayed
with her right up until the time my mother gave away my box of dolls to
Goodwill.
I’ve
always wondered if my dad changed the course of my life that Christmas. Not only because I ended up marrying the toughest
boy in school who has an impressive set of biceps, but because I chose a career
of writing about Joes—alpha-kinda guys who never mind
holding a girl’s purse while she shops.
Hi, everyone! I’m thrilled to be here at Bookhounds and
would love to hear about your favorite childhood gift. And feel free to stop by my website www.katielanebooks.com and chat
anytime.
Thanks for having me, Mary! I loved writing about my favorite Christmas gift ever. And good luck to everyone who entered the contest.
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