Simpler Times...

You know before there were computers, and ipads and ipods and iphones and androids, and wii’s and x-boxes, there was other stuff.  When we were kids, back in the prehistoric ages, we played board games for fun.  We had to watch the Wizard of Oz once a year, when it was televised, there were no DVDs.  We had to read real books from the library, there was no world wide web or Kindle to download books our books.  TV dinners had to be warmed up in the oven, there were no microwaves.  You need to use pay phones, there were no cell phones.  You had to know how to read maps, there were no GPS systems.  You had to type all your reports on manual or electric typewriters and if you made a mistake you needed “white-out” to correct it because it wasn’t saved in memory and there was no backspace/delete function.  Life was much simpler back then somehow, even though it sounds harder.

I remember many times when my mother would stop at the 5 & 10 cents store and pick up a tiny item for me, like a little Red Riding Hood doll that was two inches tall.  I made such a fuss over it, you would think she had gotten me something huge, but it only cost a few cents and it made me happy.  My mother would get a kick out of our reactions to these little surprises out of the blue.  One day, when I came home for lunch, she made me delicious lamb chops.  I didn’t know then how lucky I was.  I ate up all my meal and drank my soda and then she said to me, look under your plate.  She had purchased a pack of Beatle cards and hid them under the plate for me to find.  Little things like that meant so much.  I can just imagine if I were to pick up something like that for my kids.  I have always made it a habit of picking up things for them over the years, if I saw something I thought they would enjoy, but their reaction would never rise to the level mine did as a kid.  Today kids have so much more of everything, so only the best gifts get any kind of reaction from them.  I have tried every year to make sure they find something under the tree worthy of a big reaction of surprise.  It isn’t easy.  This year I just may fail.  After a while you run out of ideas and stuff to get.  I usually have most of my shopping done by this time of the year, instead I have bought next to nothing so far.

Even as the girls get older and say they don’t care so much about Christmas and surprises, I know that’s not true. I know we all still have that little kid inside, who wants to open a gift and be blown away.  No one wants to open a package and find socks, underwear or pajamas in it.  Did you ever hear anyone yell out, “Yay, my favorite socks!”

I hope I figure something out soon.  Meanwhile, maybe I better start window shopping online and see if anything jumps out at me.  If not it’s going to be a socks and underwear kind of Christmas!