Story # 2

I'd like to entitle this one, That's What Friends Are For.
This is actually the story Cory makes me tell people because he gets the most tickled by it. I get tickled too, although the embarrassment and awkwardness of it all is what lingers with me the most.

(Deep breath)

So let's go on back, if you will, to the fabulous year of 1982. That would put me as a darling little 1st grader in sunny Florida getting ready to go see Santa. This year as I was making my list, my neighbor friend, Ann-Marie, came over to work on hers too. (Important sidenote: Anne-Marie was about 3 or 4 years older than I and was...slow. Not retarded, but learning disabled, rode the short bus, you know what I mean.) Okay. So, she suggests instead of writing out our lists, we just cut the pictures out of the newspaper of what we want, that way Santa can see exactly what we want. So we spend the next hour cutting out pictures and later that afternoon, my mom FINALLY takes us to see Santa.

Anne-Marie and I get in line and I am just getting so excited and nervous because there's only about 7 kids in front of us. When it finally gets down to just the girl in front of Anne-Marie, I reach into my pocket to pull out my freshly cut pictures and...my pictures are not there. I reach in the other pocket. GONE! NOT THERE. I DON'T KNOW IF THEY FELL OUT OR IF I LEFT THEM AT HOME. ALL I KNOW IS THAT I HAVE NOTHING TO SHOW SANTA AND I AM FREAKING OUT. I look for my mom but she's out of ear shot talking to another mom. I start getting teary eyed (or spassing out, one of the two) because Anne-Marie asks me what's wrong. I tell her that I lost my pictures and she says, Don't worry, you can have some of mine. The very next moment...Santa is ready for Anne-marie, so in a quick haste, she looks through her pictures and hands me just one. Then off into Santa's lap she goes.

(From this point on, everything happens in slow motion.) I look down to see what toy she gave me a picture of and to my horror, I see that she has given me...deep breath...a picture of...deep breath...deodorant...deodorant!!...Soft & Dry deodorant. I immediately can't breath. I can't figure out what to do because my first grade mind can't come up with the great idea of just TELLING Santa what I want, or even just saying I forgot my pictures and pocketing the Soft & Dry.

And then Anne-Marie's turn is over and it's all me. Aaalllllll me. The horror has doubled and I'm half whimpering when I finally crawl up on Santa's lap. He asks me what I would like for Christmas and I replied the only way I knew how, with tears pooled in my eyes and a shaky hand, I gave him the picture and said, "De-o-dor-rant."

God only knows what Santa thought of my request. I mean it would be one thing if I had been a cheerful kid asking for deodorant or one of those crying kids just afraid of Santa asking for something normal like a doll. But instead he got me, a 1st grade girl about to cry because this was her only to chance to ask Santa for anything and by golly she'd rather ask for deodorant than nothing at all.

I didn't end up getting any deodorant for Christmas, to my happy surprise. My mom told me that she found my lost pictures and mailed them to the North Pole immediately and so I got the toys I had wanted after all. And after that, I never cut out pictures again.