You Can’t Always Get What You Want

When I was a kid, I made a mission out of ruining all my mother’s surprise Christmas gifts.  Not the gifts, themselves, of course, but the surprise factor.  I felt so smart breaking her heart.

Okay, perhaps that’s an exaggeration.  But it did upset her every time I figured out what she had so carefully hidden.  As for me, surprise on the day, surprise a week before, didn’t matter.  My mom always picked winners, and she also made sure that whatever we’d put on our wish lists ended up under the tree come Christmas Eve.