Christmas Swap

Submitted by Syriana Paine


As kids, we were always trying to figure out what our gifts would be, before Christmas day. With three of us in the house, my parents were constantly trying to come up with ways to fool us, and keep us on our toes, not knowing what we got. From putting things in bigger boxes and adding marbles to labeling things wrong purposely. Most often, we could figure it out, but one year.... my parents got my sister and brother really good.

My sister had been clammering for MONTHS about this thing called 'Fashion Plates' It was in a board game type box, a little thicker maybe, and consisted of all kinds of doll plates with different outfits etc, to design your own outfits. Very paper doll type toy. She was HUGE on it. Put it on every Christmas list to all our relatives, only asked for that ONE thing.

Meanwhile, my brother was ape shit over this toy called Big Trac. Now this toy was the coolest thing known to kids at the time. It had to be among the first programmable toys ever. It looked similar to a tank and had a whole control panel on the top. You could program it to go in different directions using the keypad, and when you finished, you pressed 'start' and off it would go. This was the only thing he asked for, again making it on all his Christmas lists, etc.

Of course my parents got them each the things they wanted most, but instead of putting their name on the tag, they put the Big Trac with my sister's name and the Fashion plates with my brother's name.

Come Christmas morning, there were plenty of presents to open under the tree. As usual tradition, we all got up and had to have breakfast before getting to open any gifts. Normally, Dad would go out and buy donuts and that would be it, but this year Mom decided we were to have a huge breakfast. My brother and sister were chomping at the bit to find out what they'd gotten, though neither of them had figured it out. They were sure they didnt get what they'd asked for, but it left in it's place what DID they get.

So, we had this big breakfast, fit for royalty, then had to do all the cleanup, wash everything down, etc. Finally, it came time to open the gifts. In our house, we each got one present and opened it at the same time. If it was clothes, we modeled it, a toy, we held up, etc. before we could all move on to the next round of presents. My parents held out til the very last for the special toys for them.

They kept opening their stuff along the way, happy with them, but you could tell there was that slight bit of dissapointment each time they opened someone and it wasnt THE thing they wanted. So, the last round came, and we all had our things.. by this time, my sister and brother had resigned themselves to not getting what they really wanted and were just making the best of it.

We all had our presents and my parents said to us, 'ok, this is a speed unwrap, let's see who can unwrap the fastest.' We were all excited about that part, you know kids love competition, so we all set out to see who could unwrap the fastest. My sister won and was sitting there dumbfounded with her 'Big Trac' and my brother about freaked when he saw the 'Fashion Plates' he'd unwrapped. My parents' eyes were sparkling with mischief as they saw my brother and sister both say 'HUH" and about that time they looked over to the other and saw THEIR toy, and they both LUNGED for eachother like animals fighting for prey to get their respective toy. It was the most hilarious thing I've seen to date.

They jumped up and down and screamed out loud, 'thank you thank you thank you' over and over. My parents howled with laughter at how they'd tricked them. That was the BEST Christmas ever!