Must Have

 You are excused if you have never seen Jingle All The Way. You are excused if you never worked retail. You are excused if you never shopped in person during the holiday crush. You are excused if you never went shopping. 

Ever. 

So, if you're sticking around hoping for a pithy discussion of the Schwarzenegger/Sinbad yuletide treat, you may be disappointed. The story of a father's search for that "one toy everyone has to have" is the focus here. In that 1996 film, it was Turbo Man that brought all that suburban excitement to a head. 

For my son's first Christmas. there was a run on Tickle Me Elmo. This was the must-have that drove the consumer frenzy causing the manufacturer's suggested retail price of just under thirty dollars to balloon upwards of fifteen hundred on Al Gore's Internet. There were plenty of broken hearts that year. But I resolved early on that I my child would not be a victim of such crass commercialism. Like Charlie Brown before me, I would not succumb to the perversion of the true meaning of Christmas. 

First of all, my son was seven months old. I was pretty sure that he would never remember the occasion, save for the voluminous album of snapshots and stacks of videotapes taken of him by his devoted fans. Pretty sure. 

But I wasn't seven months old, and my mind tripped back over the rush for Cabbage Patch dolls I experienced during my days in the Target stockroom. Or the Rubik's Cubes or Gameboys or Pogs or Beanie Babies or Atari 2600s that came and went before them. I remembered watching adults tear into carts full of those unique, cherub-faced stuffed mutants, and each other, as they battled to be the good parent that delivered the goods under the tree on Christmas morning.

I would not go there. Elmo was unavailable anywhere anyway, except for the fuzzy red market. I was a first year school teacher. I could not afford the markup, not even if it bought my son's love. 

But on a trip to Target with my wife a week before Christmas, we rounded the toy aisle, because this is what we have done since long before we were parents, and there it was. Not Elmo, but Big Bird. Not Tickle Me, but Peek-A-Boo. A sensor in those googly eyes could tell when light was blocked and then suddenly reintroduced. "I see you!" Any new technology is indistinguishable from magic, and this was Christmas magic. I snapped Big Bird up, took him home, and wrapped him up.

On his first Christmas morning, my son was alternately confused and entertained by everything we put in front of him. His new toothbrush was as fascinating as anything we rushed past him. But I was determined that he would experienced the full joy of getting his must-have, even if he had no concept whatsoever of "must." I felt I was taking a huge risk, because Elmo was his early fixation but when I popped Peek-A-Boo Big Bird out of the paper, removed him from his packaging, and sat him him in his lap, I was rewarded with peals of baby laughter. 

A win! I tried very hard not to remember that I could get the same reaction from tossing a blanket over his head and pulling it off abruptly. This made sense that a toy that enjoyed the same game would be a hit. 

Then, the rest of the day unfolded, and the wrapping was recycled and the living room was returned to some facsimile of order. We were travelling the next day back to Boulder, so we needed to get our rest. Somewhere in the middle of the night, as the three of us were all snug in our beds, I was awakened by a voice: "I see you..." I woke with a start. I recognized the voice, and after a few seconds of concern about a cursed Sesame Street doll, I became concerned that the noise might wake my son. Or had he escaped his crib and crawled across the room to gather up his new favorite toy?

When I walked into the room, I was relieved to see the calm steady breathing of my little boy in his crib. Then immediately unnerved by the voice, "I see you..." It was coming from the basket of stuffed animals across the room. Moving closer, I could see those eyes, sparkling in the moonlight. Activating that voice. So calm and reassuring in the daylight. Not so much in the middle of the night. 

I lifted up Big Bird's T-shirt and yanked his batteries. 

Merry Christmas. Should have gotten him a Turbo Man.