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| Dastardly Ornament Impostor! |
“Hey Mom! Whose ornament is this?” Grace yelled from the other room.
Like every year before, we put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and in less than twenty-four hours it had already fallen down. Lovely. Grace was busy trying to salvage the ornaments that crashed to the floor while we slept.
“Which one is it?” I yelled back from the kitchen.
“It’s an elephant and it says Baby’s 4th Christmas-1997!” She shouted.
Walking into the room where my daughter was gathering scattered ornaments, I leaned over her shoulder to look at the plastic elephant in her hand.
“Oh, that’s David’s ornament.” I smiled, remembering how excited I was when I found that one for him twelve years ago, hidden below boxes and doodads on the 75% off shelf. What a treasure I’ve found. I remembered thinking.
Grace wasn’t convinced. “Mom, when was David born?”
“I was born in August, 1994.” David answered, walking his five-foot-ten frame into the middle of our discussion.
Grace began to do the math. “But, Mom, this can’t be David’s ornament. He would have been three in 1997, not four in 1997.”
My trip down memory lane came to a tire-screeching halt.
She was right.
This ornament was all wrong.
For twelve Christmas’s I’ve been handing my excited little boy an ornament to proudly place on our Christmas tree that boasted of someone else’s age-not his.
Not only do I hang pictures of strange kids on my tree each year, I hang ornaments with wrong dates for my four real kids.
This plastic charlatan elephant has found his rightful place beside a Hispanic child with no name.
Dial 911. I’m turning my-counterfeit-Christmas-self in.
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