Dad sent us a tree to put up. It’s about three feet tall and is a nice addition to the living room. Plus, they sent presents with explicit instructions about “not opening until Christmas morning” and all that. Hmmm.

The anticipation kills me. I find myself reverting back to a precocious little nine-year-old, digging through stashed presents in a closet, completely under the radar of the parental unit.

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Maybe I’ve wrote about this on here, or maybe I haven’t, but, I’ll share:

I remember one year finding the holiday stash, and, as soon as the time was right, digging into it to do a little detective work.

There was this square little box, maybe five inches by five inches with my name on it. I remember shaking it and feeling this odd, dense object inside. It didn’t rattle with that dead giveaway of, “Legos.” There wasn’t the clank of some toy. What could it be?

Some days went by. The mystery contents of this present were haunting me real bad.

It was killing me, so when mom and everyone took off one afternoon, I dug in, isolated the wrapped item and went to work on it.

With the precision of a neurosurgeon, the cunning of a forensic scientist and the dumbassness of a shit-ass little punk, I started the process of carefully peeling back the scotch tape, creasing the paper open, sliding the box out, and finally digging into the box.

This was the big moment. All the wondering, pondering, pining…and here I was about to discover the contents!

Mom and dad and Santa had this way of always suprising me with something amazing…aside from my list of wants…something that made me think and go, “They know me, and know how I need this…” I loved that part of christmas morning. Maybe this was that mystery item. My imagination was racing.

So I pull the box out, ever-so-carefully, and open it, and it’s a….

…belt.

A belt? Yep. All rolled up tight into a little donut.

Damn. All that work, all that mental anguish, all that counter-intelligence, and here I was staring at a belt I’d be forced to wear to church or something.

I carefully put the present back together, sealing it, stashing it, and feeling good and burnt.

I learned my lesson on that one. That was the last of my snooping.

I still remember the smell of the cedar panels that lined that little closets walls.