Christmas '92

So let's pick up where yesterday's post left off. I picked the Christmas tree up, leaned it back against the wall, and straightened out the decorations. I Will Always Love You went off, and I gave up on finding Christmas music. Fast forward a few days and it's Christmas. I wake up at my mother's apartment where we have an actual (green) Christmas tree. The white one that I put up at my grandmother's house was so pitiful that my mother was compelled to go to Ames or Zares or whatever the place was called over on Rhode Island Avenue and we got a cheap tree.

I was ten, so the magic of Santa Claus was long since dead. I'm sure it came as a relief to my mother. Instead of me handing her thick envelopes with four or five page letters to mail to Santa detailing all of the things I did right that year and the presents I felt were reasonable compensations for my efforts, now she sat down with me at the kitchen table like some kind of proprietor of a fledgling small business. "Look, I don't have a whole lot of money. You give me a list of what you want. Want! Not what you think you're actually going to get. Write it in order of how bad you want it and put down how much it costs. I have about a hundred dollars to spend this year, so don't go crazy."

It wasn't something that she needed to say. The four of us were living in a one bedroom apartment in a sketchy neighborhood about a block from Trinidad near Benning Road. All I wanted for Christmas was a moving truck. Still, I swung for the fences and asked for a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis or a Neo Geo. She sent the list back. My union redrafted a list asking only for Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game for regular Nintendo.

So I ran to the tree that morning and there were dozens of gifts...all labeled for my one-year old sister. Beneath the pile was a box that I knew was probably a sweater or a hat and glove set from my grandmother (I was right) and some cheap, ugly Tiger Handheld LCD Game knockoff from Montgomery Wards. "Hurt" doesn't even begin to describe how I felt, but I didn't say anything. I tried to look grateful. I kept waiting around hoping that there was a big surprise somewhere. Nope. Over the next hour my mother seemed to develop an attitude that I could only guess was the result of my poorly hidden lack of appreciation for my presents.

I sat down to play Nintendo on my beat up 13 inch black and white television and she got mad. The living room was technically my room, because I used to sleep on the couch, but during the day it was everybody's room. It was apparently rude to play video games on the living room television on Christmas. That was another thing that always bothered me. My mother had a 20 inch color TV in her room. Back then 20 inches was huge, at least compared to my little TV which looked like an iPod screen compared to what's out now. You could turn her TV on and tune to a station and the show would just appear as if by some kind of witchcraft. Not my little pathetic thing.
Step 1: Turn on the TV
Step 2: Take the knob off the top and put it on the bottom to change the station
Step 3: Move the antenna
Step 4: Move it some more
Step 5: Walk away from the TV to see if the picture stays still
Step 6: Move the antenna again
Step 7: Adjust the vertical and horizontal knobs in the back
Step 8: Bang the top of the TV
Step 9: Just stand there with your hand touching the antenna until the next commercial

So, you know how it goes when you're mad as a kid. You can't speak your mind, at least not to the average black mother. I just sat there and "thought" things real hard. "She could go in her room and watch TV. Why do they need to be out here? Why can't I go in her room and plug up my Nintendo? Maybe I was switched at birth. Maybe my real family is rich and they're gonna come find me and when they do I'm gonna get a TV of my own and my own room." My mother interrupted with, "Fix your face! You roll your eyes at me again and Imma knock em out your head. Matter of fact, go take out the trash!"

So I went outside to take out the trash and I came back in and just sat in the kitchen imagining what my real rich family might be like. My mother appeared again. "What are you sitting in the kitchen for? Go clean up the living room!" I walk into the living room  (cursing her out in my head) and I immediately moonwalk backwards towards the door. My TV was gone. In its place was a brand new Zenith 20 inch television with a remote control.
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I didn't say anything for a good minute. I just stared at it. I knew it was a TV and I knew it was in my house. My brain just couldn't connect the dots. I looked back toward the kitchen and my mother was smiling, "Merry Christmas!" I still didn't get it. "So, am I getting your old television?" She looked at me, "No boy, it's yours." I lost my damned mind! I can't even find the words to describe the emotion. It had buttons! Like...no knobs. Just buttons! That was futuristic to me. A remote control!? Oh my God, the possibilities! I can be on the couch and change the channel at the same time. Oh my God! I can turn up the sound from over there by the window. Holy shit! I can hook my Nintendo up with the coaxial cable. I don't need that adapter with the two screws anymore! I'm one of the Jetsons! And when I turned it on...Man/Girl/Whoever you are out there...When I turned it on, it asked me to set the time. My TV could tell me what time it was! "I don't need a watch anymore!"

I cherished that thing for the next 16 years until that lady I married finally convinced me to give it away in 2008. "You have a flat screen now. Let it go!" Little does she know, I kept the remote.