Gadzooks

As a kid I always loved this time of year. Still do. In our house growing up it meant putting the train platform under the tree with our Santa Fe engine and an assortment of box cars chugging around the oval and a slot car track on the inner circle. The houses from Plasticville were arranged behind the slot car track and you had to turn some of the houses just so, in order to hide the walls that had been partially melted by the lava hot Christmas light bulbs placed inside of them.

I would play with the train and slot cars for hours. I would only get into moderate trouble as I’d break ornaments during my missions crawling under the tree branches to retrieve a slot car that has leaped off the track into the plastic neighborhood.

Most of all, during the season I loved when the Sears Christmas catalog would arrive. An inch think, with colored pages showing all the possibilities of the season. Laid before me in this catalog was the unabridged dictionary of toys! I would study it each evening as if some aspect of the toys had escaped me during the first 19 reviews of the selections.

There was nothing quite as satisfying as hot cocoa in the left hand, a red pen in the right, thumbing through the pages and circling toys that looked particularly awesome that Christmas season.

Gadzooks! Times sure have changed when prospecting for gifts.  A click of the mouse and a swipe across the tablet have replaced the magic of the catelog.

As further proof, I offer the following Christmas list from my youngest. To assist her parents she not only listed the items, but categorized them for easy reference and gift navigation.

I especially like the ‘auto filters’ on the Excel columns enabling quick filtering down to a specific category when reviewing the list. Also notice the festive colors and the ‘Duck Tape’ request categorized as 'Other Stuff'. You can never have enough Duck Tape, even at the age of 9.

Gone are the days when a $25 piece of pink plastic delivers wide eyed wonderment on Christmas morning.

Please note: while the story is true in spirit, portions of this narrative have been exaggerated for the literary impact.