Laura Crawford 1

Personal Narrative

Laura Crawford

12/2/2010

6th A.P. English—Burke

Personal Narrative

The Gift

To a mother, the holiday season is a stressful time where she spends excessive amounts of

money shopping and spends excessive amounts of time cleaning. To a father, the white winter

wonderland is a perfect opportunity for demonstrating his overwhelming masculinity with massive,

hefty Christmas-tree-lifting, attic hunting, and spending days outside in the bitter cold stapling bulbs to a

roof. To a counterfeit, jolly, old man in a cheap red suit and a fake snow white beard, the most

wonderful time of the year is a paycheck. But to a child, say an innocent lass of seven, for instance,

Christmas is the world. A time where everything in a seven-year-old’s mind is perfect—magic is in every

breath and the icy breeze is only a subtle reminder of the wonderment in store between the completion

of Thanksgiving feast and the commencement of the New Year’s Day Parade.

There comes a time in every child’s life, however, that the Christmas spirit is not enough to

repress those inexorable tears. Christmas is the time of year when an already susceptible child is most

vulnerable. So much hope to disappoint, so much fun to stifle with adult regulations, so much energy to

detain with frequent ‘time outs’ for rambunctious acts of childhood such as just ever-so-slightly peaking

at presents or making a tiny bit of fake snow, “you know mom, it should be part of every child’s

Christmas experience. And growing up in the Deep South…”-so much for that.
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Personal Narrative

As a child, though, I was forced to come to terms with devastating disappointment during this

most magical season. It was my seventh Christmas, during an extended family gathering at a park in

Saraland. My grandmother is fortunate to have eight brothers and sisters so whenever they all got

together, along with their own customary families; it was kind of a big deal. As a bright and bubbly, blue-

eyed, curly blonde-haired little porcelain doll, I was lead into the building by my parents, patiently

pushing through the bazaar of names and faces that I still cannot place together to this day. My family

should be reported to the Guinness Book of World Records because within five minutes of arriving, I had

received “luuuuvin’” from approximately fifty different faces, half of which I had most likely never seen

before. Are you aware of how difficult it is to wipe off that much slobber inconspicuously? At any rate,

after the socializing began amongst the adults, I slipped through the grips of copious relatives, making

my way with all the other children to the small play area, complete with monkey bars, swings, and slides

that were vindictively placed “over yonder, but come ‘err and tawlk ta mey’uh bit first, darrrlin’ eeyts

ben so lawng since I lay’ist saw yew.”

Later, the feasting began. When the cakes and coffee began making their rounds, I observed

vigilantly as my Great Uncle Herbert disappeared out of the back and a mysterious man in a red suit with

a suspiciously white beard came through the front door carrying a sack only moments later. “Aha,”

thought I, ”how clever. Everyone knows that the real Santa Claus must be preparing for the big day (For

it was the middle of December)! But nay, I shan’t disperse my secret to the other feeble minded kids.

Ignorance is bliss, and all that. No, I will keep my little secret safe within the deep realms of my heart.”

Besides, I was distracted by the more pressing subject matter that dashed into my childish mind a mere

second later; the first step of the theorem that all children conceive as equality and justice in the

duration of December: Santa + acceptable behavior + a few hints and conveniently placed Christmas

lists=the things worth waiting all year for X 10^the things worth all of that cleaning and being nice. By

my calculations, presents could not be far. I watched in hardly-restrained apprehension as cousin after
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Personal Narrative

cousin went, as they were called, to sit upon Santa’s lap, receive a gift, and smile for a quick picture. The

stack of presents was dwindling down and I beheld my relatives unwrapping all sorts of childhood

wonders; guns, dolls, remote control cars, Legos, you name it. Even though my faith in the ‘awesome

factor’ of my gift was steadily rising, my anxiety was almost unbearable. “Surely, I must be called soon.

I’m practically royalty.” And sure as the tide,(”Laura Leeeeiiiiiighh,”) I was. I sauntered up to the front of

the room with my nose stuck in the ceiling, demanding everyone’s attention. “I’ll show them how it’s

really done. Gift-acceptance, no matter how wretched the present, is my forte in life!” (And to this day,

it still is. And thus, my acting career took flight.)

I noticed that my present was in a considerably smaller package than the presents I observed

with a rate of eight or above on the ‘awesome factor’. ‘That’s okay though,’ I reasoned, ‘good things

come in small packages. I’m short. And I’m great. The size of the package must be indirectly proportional

to the expense of the package.’(Yet another equation in the Children’s Christmas theorem: when size of

the package increases, generally speaking, the expense decreases, and vice versa.) I would like to note

that I had never been proven incorrect prior to this incident. But oh buddy, when my mathematical

equation erred, it plummeted. I accepted my small, and allegedly, expensive gift with pride, took my

picture and made my way back to my seat. I carefully shredded the wrapping paper inhibiting me from

my surprise and disposed of it properly by hurling it to the floor. I knocked off the box lid with greed in

my eyes, my face preparing itself for that dashing smile of triumph; I tore through the barricading walls

of tissue paper and could not believe what I saw. Christmas erasers. A pack of Christmas erasers, the one

dollar tag still attached. I was devastated. Was this to be my lot in life? Was I only worth a dollar and

some change, not even the decency of detaching the price tag? Certainly not. It was a joke. There was

another surprise. Oh, there just had to be! I made sure the box was completely empty. I ransacked the

tissue the paper. I even bent down on the floor to retrieve the wrapping. But to no avail. My eyes welled

up with tears. With my head bent and my face down, I sprinted out of the room and onto the
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Personal Narrative

playground, straight to the swings. All the while thinking, this was my worth in the world. While

everyone around me, the ungrateful, undeserving little savages received my gifts, I got erasers. I didn’t

even use erasers. You know why? Cause I was never wrong. Such an insult! “Oh here ya go, I gotya some

erasers so you can expunge all of your little mistakes. It’s okay though, because they’re festive and cute.

And completely usable. So stop messing up in life.” My head was spinning, it was all so unfathomable.

After a while I stopped weeping and wailing long enough to notice that my grandmother, the

procurer of the disastrous erasers, was there by the swing, consoling me. It is needless to say that all

went well, I mean, I’m still here, writing about that time that I figured was the end my seven-year world.

And a very important, grown-up lesson was learned. Sometimes, life gives you festive erasers when

everyone else around you gets shiny cars and pretty dresses. And honestly, that’s as far as I have gotten

in that lesson.