The Gift of Irony

One Christmas, many moons ago, I had just turned five and my family and I made the long drive to the Bay Area to spend Christmas with our extended family. While we were there, we stopped at my aunt and uncle's house to exchange gifts and visit. I love the excitement of unwrapping a gift and I imagine I did back then too. My brother was thrilled to open a new Transformer toy and my younger sister was already playing with her Cabbage Patch telephone with real sounds! I pulled back the colorful paper and revealed my brand new...book.

Not just any book, Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia Volume 1, Featuring Your Body. I kept looking at the toy phone then back at my book. Clearly unable to hide my disappointment (as evident by the home video taken) I remember trying to play with my sisters toy, only to get shoo'd away. My grandpa offered to read my new book to me (since I was not even in Kindergarten, and couldn't read). If you've never seen/read this book, it's perhaps a 5th or 6th grade reading level and boringly scientific, not in a your-5-year-old-will-love this kind of way.

While my grandpa read to me, I picked my nose and watched my sister and brother play. I still get teased about that video but then I remind everyone that I really had nothing better to do. But this is one of the few vivid memories I have at that young an age. I don't know if it's because of being so disappointed or the fact that it was documented on VHS. However, after all these years, the Transformer is gone, the Cabbage Patch phone is probably in a landfill somewhere, but I still have my Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedia. It does have some crayon markings in the front and back covers, so I obviously found a use for it, but now I just look at it and smile. It's a book I never have nor never will read but that's the beauty of it. What's better than the gift of irony?