Easy-Bake Falcon
Daily Post prompt: Was there a special gift or toy you wanted as a child but never received? What was it?
This is the kind of prompt that I dislike because it forces me to be all woe is me.
I never got anything I wanted as a kid.
Every Christmas, my sister and I would inspect the presents wrapped up under the tree trying to figure out what was what. We never succeeded. Instead of the Millennium Falcon we wanted….
…we would get a knockoff version of an Easy-Bake Oven, which doesn’t even fly. We never got refills for it so it was good only a couple of times.
You get the idea. Mostly for Christmas and birthdays I got IOUs. I would open a box that I was sure had Darth Vader in it and find a new pair of socks with a note that said “This voucher good for horseback riding lessons!” I never got horseback riding lessons. I never got the stereo that we actually went to the store to pick out and put a deposit down on. I never got the car or even the college education I was promised in lieu of presents.
I didn’t really care about any of those things. Well, I did, but it’s not like not getting Darth Vader destroyed my life. It was the lying that did it. It was the bald-face lies that I got for Christmas that ruined my childhood.
If they couldn’t afford a real gift, all my parents had to do was say so. I would have understood. I would have been disappointed, but I would have understood. Instead, for Christmas and birthdays, I got promises that never came true. A broken promise to a child is far worse than not getting a new toy.
I learned not to trust my parents. I learned that when I opened a box and found a note, it was about as valuable as writing “money” on the same paper and trying to pay for groceries with it. Those notes were useless. If I got a piece of paper in a box, my heart sank because I knew it would never be anything more than a piece of paper. Not one of those IOUs was ever cashed in.
I learned not to trust the people I should have been able to trust the most. I learned to keep my expectations very low. I learned how to use my imagination to turn a knock off Easy-Bake into a Millennium Falcon. I learned how to entertain myself. I learned how valuable a library card really is. I learned self-reliance from an early age and it hasn’t failed me yet. I decided to make my dreams come true myself.
But I’d still really like that Millennium Falcon.
15 Responses to “Easy-Bake Falcon”
i’m sorry they did that to you, it’s so cruel. xo
It sucks that they did that to you, but at least some good came from it. Self-reliance is something few people seem to have today.
True dat.
Easy bake ovens do fly. Right off the deck of my house. I hate those things.
Yup. They are totally useless.
Would love to see you playing with an easy bake oven like it was the Millenium Falcon.
I couldn’t agree with you more about the lying. One year, I asked for a remote control car and my step-father said that we couldn’t afford gifts since the economy was bad. On Christmas day, he gave me the remote control car I asked for. It felt like a knife in the back.
Glad you found the silver lining in IOscrewUs.
Believe me, we tried our best to turn that thing into a Millennium Falcon.
You should go buy yourself a Millenium Falcon. Just for the hell of it. I have two daughters, so I can pretend the stuff I buy is for them, but I’m totally loving it too. Here’s hoping you have better Christmases from now on.
My sister actually bought one as an adult, but it just wasn’t the same.
I promise never to give my children a note for a gift, unless it’s a sappy accolade about how they will rock this world.
Good. IOUs for Xmas just suck.
As a kid I would give notes/vouchers to my parents, those things never came true, I promise my dad a Jaguar, even gave him the pic. I hope he is not disappointed.
Hm. I guess you have no choice but to buy him one now. ;)
Wow… sounds so much like my family.
Sorry to hear that.